Pete Patterson

[Pete Patterson @ppatterson85]

@HowardMSklar @Tactical_review @2AFDN @MorosKostas It is now docketed: https://t.co/qfIsQ5AejT. Takes a while sometimes.

[Pete Patterson @ppatterson85]

@KannonShanmugam Lycabbetus?

[Pete Patterson @ppatterson85]

@KannonShanmugam Love it. I’ll be there in about a week. Is this the little church by the cathedral downtown?

[Pete Patterson @ppatterson85]

A lingering thought on the birthright citizenship argument: there was much discussion about practical complications with a domicile requirement. But I believe there is general agreement that domicile is required for state citizenship under the clause. So, regardless of how the clause is interpreted for national citizenship, any practical complications relating to domicile will still be present for determining state citizenship. And that would seem to defeat any inference that the text should be intepreted to avoid those complications, as the framers and ratifiers were not intent on avoiding them.

[Pete Patterson @ppatterson85]

@MorosKostas you may like this one

[Pete Patterson @ppatterson85]

My latest on SCOTUSblog:
The 14th Amendment’s citizenship clause is not trapped in amber: a reflection on oral argument.

https://t.co/RQVFPL5SnL

[Pete Patterson @ppatterson85]

@MorosKostas Thanks for the support!

[Pete Patterson @ppatterson85]

@MorosKostas It is remarkable that the argument appears to be that there a handful of frozen-in-time exceptions without a consistent principle unifying them and without a clear tie to the constitutional language.

[Pete Patterson @ppatterson85]

Thanks to @thedispatch for inviting me to contribute to the debate over the meaning of birthright citizenship: https://t.co/Ls4jI4nNRv

[Pete Patterson @ppatterson85]

https://t.co/xKBiMTGBEq

[Pete Patterson @ppatterson85]

Re-upping my SCOTUSblog pieces on birthright citizenship, which address many of the key questions asked during today's argument, including the import of the English common law, the meaning of the Civil Rights Act of 1866 relative to the Citizenship Clause, and the status of Native American tribe members born off of tribal land. Links below.

[Pete Patterson @ppatterson85]

https://t.co/1ASS4XJ2HC

[Pete Patterson @ppatterson85]

Link to decision: https://t.co/6KW7fMFG9S

[Pete Patterson @ppatterson85]

Very nice win today for our clients and the people of North Carolina in the voter ID case before Judge Biggs of the Middle District of North Carolina. This one is especially gratifying given that we fought all the way up to the United States Supreme Court to establish the right of our clients, leaders of the North Carolina legislature, to intervene in the case to defend the law.

[Pete Patterson @ppatterson85]

@HowardMSklar Agree common use is not a plain-text inquiry. I wrote a short piece on this: https://t.co/PxPOZGa1gU

[Pete Patterson @ppatterson85]

The way we have been arguing this is that what the government needs to show is that something is not a common arm; i.e., the American people have decided that it is a dangerous and unusual arm that can be reserved for special and not common use. Although not 2A cases, Staples and Smith & Wesson are helpful in that they both were attempting to draw a line between common and unusual arms. Staples used terms like "commonplace," "generally available," and "traditionally lawful" to describe common arms. And Smith & Wesson used terms like "widely legal" and "bought by many ordinary customers." This also tracks with Alito's concurrence in Caetano and Kavanaugh's statement respecting denial in Snope, which both looked at common ownership and general legality. Under this approach, above a certain number (say, in the millions), it becomes impossible to say that something is dangerous and unusual. But even at lower numbers, it is simply impossible to say that the American people consider something dangerous and unusual if as a general matter they sit idly by while the items remain freely available on the market.

[Pete Patterson @ppatterson85]

Link to petition: https://t.co/xRKWmkSLFY

[Pete Patterson @ppatterson85]

In addition to Gardner, I would like to highlight another case we have pending before SCOTUS on cert. The case challenges George Peterson's conviction for possessing an unregistered suppressor in his home. The Fifth Circuit's reasoning upholding the conviction would allow the government to require the registration of all firearms. From the intro:

There is no historical practice of firearm regulation that could justify a registration scheme allowing the government to systematically track who in the community owns arms. Indeed, in the leadup to the Revolution, the British “Crown began to disarm the inhabitants of the most rebellious areas,” District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570, 594 (2008), and the Second Amendment was understood to prevent any similar “flagitous attempt” by the government of this Nation to “disarm the people,” id. at 607 (quoting WILLIAM RAWLE, A VIEW OF THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 121–22 (1825)).

Against this backdrop, it cannot seriously be maintained that in declaring that “the right to keep and bear arms . . . shall not be infringed,” the Framers and ratifiers of the Bill of Rights understood the Government to be authorized to maintain a registry that would facilitate the very infringements that the Second Amendment was meant to prohibit. Yet that is what the Fifth Circuit held in this case, albeit only by misconstruing the National Firearms Act’s taxation-and-registration regime as a shall-issue-licensing law. Petitioner George Peterson was sentenced to twenty-four months in prison for possessing a firearm suppressor in a safe in his bedroom closet.