« Article on Federalization of the National Guard | Main | Defensive gun use blog »

Seegers challenge to DC law

Steve Halbrook's motion for rehearing in the Seegers case is online here in .pdf. The DC Circuit had held his appellants had no "standing" to challenge the DC gun law since they were not being prosecuted and had not show a realistic threat of prosecution (which requires a lot more than the fact that it's against the law).

I've said before that the funny thing about standing is that if the courts like cases of your type you almost always have it, and if they don't, you don't. I suppose there is some deep legal reason for that strange coincidence, but I haven't yet discerned it.

Steve makes the points that applying the standing requirement in this way essentially cuts off law-abiding citizens from the courts, and that courts should encourage citizens to work out legal issues through the legal system rather than telling them to go out and break the law if they want a ruling.

Makes sense to me, altho I suspect the DC Circuit won't change its mind. Standing is a very convenient "dump button" to avoid ruling in a case where the result might be undesirable to the court.

· contemporary issues