Law & Public Safety
More on birthright citizenship
About a year ago, in “A guide to the birthright citizenship debate,” I provided links to some of the best academic arguments on both sides. The current issue of the…
William Blackstone
English jurist, judge and Tory politician (1723-1780)
Legal insights
Legal insights
Trump’s tariffs face uphill challenge at appeals court
Tariffs function as taxes, with the costs of import duties on goods entering the United States primarily falling on American companies and consumers. The key legal question now centers on whether…
Research Brief
Law & Public Safety
Nondelegation and the separation of powers: What they mean for Trump’s tariffs
President Donald Trump has ignited a firestorm with his ever-shifting tariff edicts. He imposed wild new tariffs by invoking the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA). But the IEEPA does…
Regulation
Criminal Law Reform In North Carolina
Executive Summary North Carolina has thousands of crimes scattered across untold pages of statutes, regulations, and ordinances. Many of these crimes are duplicative, unconstitutional, or outright silly. This labyrinth of…
Law & Public Safety
How the North Carolina State Constitution describes the results from liberty
Some truths are so self-evident that our state constitution infers them, such as this one: "the blessings of liberty."
Liberty
This Little Piggy Went to Court, Continued
Last week, the Independent reported that: In a landmark decision, the jury ruling on the first of twenty-six nuisance cases against pork-producer Murphy-Brown LLC awarded the plaintiffs damages of more…
Law & Public Safety
Gorsuch and the administrative state
George Will praises U.S. Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch at National Review Online for an opinion that strikes a blow against the administrative state. [O]ne week after the first anniversary…
Research Brief
Law & Public Safety
This Little Piggy Went to Court
Pigs have many virtues, but smelling good isn’t one of them. If fact, they—or, more accurately, their waste products—smell bad. As a result, pigs have played—and in North Carolina, they…
Regulation
Mens Rea Reform: The Law Shouldn’t Turn Innocent People into Criminals
For centuries, it was a universally accepted principle of Anglo-American law that a criminal conviction requires proof, not only of a wrongful act—which lawyers call the “actus reus”—but also of…
Education
The Magna Carta still matters
Yesterday, the John Locke Foundation celebrated the 800th anniversary of the Magna Carta. Dr. Troy Kickler, director of the North Carolina History Project, published a superb article that outlined the…
Liberty
Beantown bannings nothing new
When the mayor of Boston urged Chick-fil-A’s owner to take a hike because of his publicly stated views on traditional marriage, Daniel J. Flynn was not surprised. Flynn explains why…