View all Articles
Commentary By Ilya Shapiro

MI Responds: United States v. Rahimi

Governance Supreme Court

Ilya Shapiro, senior fellow and director of constitutional studies at the Manhattan Institute, reacts to this morning's decision in the Supreme Court case United States v. Rahimi:

"Rahimi is interesting on two levels. First, its holding that person who has been found by a court to pose a credible threat to the physical safety of another may be temporarily disarmed shows that the Court’s Second Amendment jurisprudence is measured and reasonable. Second, and most significantly going forward, there’s a fascinating interplay among the separate concurrences of Justices Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett—the three Trump appointees—about the nature of originalism and what a text/structure/history approach means for jurisprudence. Scholars and pundits will be referencing this dialogue as much or more for that as for its decision about a particular firearms regulation. It all shows that originalism is a rigorous intellectual enterprise, not some post-hoc rationalization for conservative outcomes as its bad-faith critics allege."

Ilya Shapiro is a senior fellow and director of constitutional studies at the Manhattan Institute. His forthcoming book is called Lawless: The Miseducation of America's Elites. To book interviews with Ilya Shapiro, please reach out to Grace Twehous at gtwehous@manhattan.institute

Photo by Richard Sharrocks/Getty Images