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Alito's questionaire and gun cases
Orin Kerr notes that Judge Alito has submitted a 64 page answer to the customary Senate questions, so I read it for anything relating to firearms law. The only portion I could find was where he described his role in briefing cases with the Solicitor General:
"Dickerson v. New Banner Institute, 460 U.S. 103 (1983). The question presented in this case was whether firearms disabilities imposed by provisions of the Gun Control Act apply to a person who was convicted of a state offense punishable by imprisonment for a term exceeding one year but whose conviction was expunged. On behalf of the Director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, we argued that statutorily prescribed disabilities are not automatically removed by expunction of the conviction under a state statute. The text of the statute applies to all persons “convicted” of certain crimes, regardless of whether the conviction is subsequently expunged. Other provisions of the Act and related federal statutes reinforce this conclusion and show that Congress carefully distinguished between present status and the occurrence of past events.
The Supreme Court agreed in an opinion by Justice Blackmun. The Court accepted our argument that an expunction under state law does not alter the effect of a disabling conviction for purposes of the federal statute, finding that the interpretation was supported not just by statutory text but by the purpose of Title IV, which was intended to curb crime by keeping firearms out of the hands of those not legally entitled to possess them."
Dickinson was overriden by the 1986 Firearm Owners' Protection Act.
Comments
From this, I gather Alito is the 'Strict Constructionist' he's being presented as.
Posted by: PersonalResponsibility at December 1, 2005 03:44 PM