Adam Winkler is a professor at UCLA School of Law and an expert on constitutional law. He is the author of numerous articles on constitutional law and the co-editor of the Encyclopedia of the American Constitution.

Blog Entries by Adam Winkler

Making Off Like Madoff

Posted April 22, 2009 | 11:33 AM (EST)


Right after Barack Obama was elected president, I followed his lead and began reading books on Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Great Depression. Like the president-elect, I wanted to know what lessons history had for dealing with our dire economic crisis.

Much of our current crisis stems from the financial...

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The New Second Amendment: A Bark Worse Than Its Right

1113 Comments | Posted January 2, 2009 | 11:19 AM (EST)


In June, 2008, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a landmark ruling on the Second Amendment right to bear arms, D.C. v. Heller. For over 70 years, the federal courts had read that amendment to protect only a state's right to organize militias, like the National Guard. In a long-awaited victory...

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Justice Scalia's Living Constitution

Posted June 27, 2008 | 09:17 PM (EST)


One of the most intriguing aspects of Justice Scalia's opinion in District of Columbia v. Heller, the landmark Second Amendment decision handed down Thursday, is its use of living constitutionalism to justify the decision to invalidate D.C.'s handgun ban. On first look, the opinion appears to be an ode to...

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Bush v. Gore Meets the Second Amendment

Posted June 26, 2008 | 01:37 PM (EST)


There are some striking similarities between the Heller decision and Bush v. Gore. In both cases, the Court articulates a "new" right to be recognized by the Courts: a right to bear arms in Heller and a right to have votes tabulated equally in Bush v. Gore. Yet in both...

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Justice Scalia & the Coarsening of American Culture

Posted July 1, 2006 | 07:34 PM (EST)


Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia has been making more frequent forays into the public spotlight recently. In a recent televised interview on Stanley Pottinger's "Beyond Politics," Scalia was asked what would be the one thing he would change about America if he were King. His response was laughable, betraying a...

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Why the NSA's Domestic Spying Program is Illegal

Posted February 17, 2006 | 11:52 AM (EST)


The uproar on Capitol Hill over President Bush's secret program to use the National Security Administration to spy on American citizens without a warrant continues to grow. But the NSA program - and the President's defense of it - are much more worrisome than many in Washington realize.

Under...

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