Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Email
Answers.com

Printz v. United States

 
US Supreme Court: Printz v. United States
Home > Library > Law & Legal Issues > US Supreme Court
Printz v. United States

Click here for more free books!

521 U.S. 98 (1997), argued 3 Dec. 1996, decided 27 June 1997 by vote of 5 to 4; Scalia for the Court, O'Connor and Thomas concurring, Stevens, Souter, Ginsburg, and Breyer in dissent.

In his attempt to assassinate President Ronald Reagan in 1981, John Hinckley gravely wounded White House press secretary James Brady. After years of lobbying, Congress, relying on the Commerce Clause of the Constitution, finally passed in 1993 the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act, which required, among other things, a waiting period of five days to purchase a handgun and charged the chief local law enforcement officials, such as county sheriffs, to conduct background checks on persons seeking to purchase weapons. Under these provisions of the law, approximately sixty‐six hundred applications a month were rejected because the would‐be purchasers fell into one of several proscribed categories, such as felons and drug users. Two sheriffs, Jay Printz of Ravalli County, Montana, and Richard Mack of Graham County, Arizona, challenged the law successfully in separate lower federal court lawsuits, arguing that the federal law had placed an undue burden on local law enforcement officials. The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit subsequently heard the appeal from the federal government and upheld the law. Printz then appealed.

A bitterly divided Court agreed with Printz. Justice Antonin Scalia's opinion alluded to both the limits of the Commerce Clause and to the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution, which grants to the states powers that the Constitution does not give to the national government. Scalia's opinion, however, rested mostly on his and the majority's understanding of the federal structure of the nation in striking down the background‐check provision of the law (see Federalism). Scalia insisted that the federal principle of dividing power between the states and the national government was one of the primary means by which the Constitution protected liberty. As a result, the federal government could no more order state officials to administer federal law than state officials could order federal officials to administer state law. Moreover, Scalia insisted that the principle was categorical, meaning that there could be no test that would balance state and federal interests in such a way as to give the advantage to the federal government. Scalia's opinion was one of the most remarkable assertions by the Court in favor of state authority in the history of the nation.

The dissenters were diametrically opposed to the majority. Justice John Paul Stevens argued that when Congress acted within one of its express grants of authority, such as the commerce power, it was supreme and had to be obeyed. Indeed, Stevens and the other dissenters could not imagine the American nation in any other way. The legislation passed by Congress, he claimed, was as binding on the states as were laws passed by the legislatures of the states themselves. The federal government, he continued, was entirely within its authority to require local officials to help administer the background‐check provisions of the Brady bill, Such enforcement action, Stevens concluded, imposed a minor burden on the states and not the massive incursion that Scalia described in his opinion.

The actual impact of the decision on the administration of justice was limited. The decision did relieve the chief local law enforcement officials from performing background checks, but under the terms of the Brady bill their duties were scheduled to end in 1998 in any case, to be replaced by a federal record‐checking system administered by gun dealers. Still the constitutional importance of the decision was clear enough. It marked the ascension of state power in Supreme Court decision making and a continuation of the aggressive effort by Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and the conservative majority on the Court to readjust the state‐federal balance in favor of the states. Indeed, Justice Clarence Thomas, in a concurring opinion, concluded that, given the Second Amendment's reference to the “right of the people to keep and bar Arms,” Congress probably had no authority to regulate intrastate gun sales under any circumstances.

See also State Sovereignty and States' Rights.

— Kermit L. Hall

Search unanswered questions...

Enter a question here...
Search: All sources Community Q&A Reference topics

Wikipedia: Printz v. United States
Top
Home > Library > Miscellaneous > Wikipedia
Printz v. United States
Seal of the United States Supreme Court.svg
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued December 3, 1996
Decided June 27, 1997
Full case name Jay Printz, Sheriff/Coroner, Ravalli County, Montana, Petitioner 95-1478 v. United States; Richard Mack, Petitioner 95-1503 v. United States
Citations 521 U.S. 898 (more)
117 S. Ct. 2365; 138 L. Ed. 2d 914; 1997 U.S. LEXIS 4044; 97 Cal. Daily Op. Service 5096; 97 Daily Journal DAR 8213; 11 Fla. L. Weekly Fed. S 224
Prior history On writs of cert. to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
Holding
The Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act's interim provision commanding the "chief law enforcement officer" (CLEO) of each local jurisdiction to conduct background checks, §922(s)(2), is unconstitutional.
Court membership
Chief Justice
William Rehnquist
Case opinions
Majority Scalia, joined by Rehnquist, O'Connor, Kennedy, Thomas
Concurrence O'Connor
Concurrence Thomas
Dissent Stevens, joined by Souter, Ginsburg, Breyer
Dissent Souter
Dissent Breyer, joined by Stevens
Laws applied
U.S. Const. amend. X; Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act, Pub. L. 103-159, 107 Stat. 1536

Printz v. United States, 521 U.S. 898 (1997)[1], was a United States Supreme Court ruling that established the unconstitutionality of certain interim provisions of the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act.

Contents

Background

The Gun Control Act of 1968

The Gun Control Act of 1968 established a detailed Federal scheme governing the distribution of firearms. The GCA prohibited firearms ownership by certain broad categories of individuals thought to pose a threat to public safety, such as convicted felons, fugitives from justice, unlawful aliens, and many others.

The Brady Act

In 1993, Congress amended the GCA by enacting the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act. The Act required the Attorney General to establish a national instant background check system by November 30, 1998 to prevent firearms sales to such "prohibited persons."

Interim provisions

The Act also immediately put in place certain interim provisions until that system became operative. Under the interim provisions, a firearms dealer who proposes to transfer a handgun must receive from the transferee a statement (the Brady Form), containing the name, address and date of the proposed transferee along with a sworn statement that the transferee is not among any of the classes of prohibited purchasers, verify the identity of the transferee by examining an identification document, and provide the "chief law enforcement officer" (CLEO) of the transferee's residence with notice of the contents (and a copy) of the Brady Form. When a CLEO receives the required notice of a proposed transfer, they must "make a reasonable effort to ascertain within 5 business days whether receipt or possession would be in violation of the law, including research in whatever State and local recordkeeping systems are available and in a national system designated by the Attorney General."

The plaintiffs

Petitioners Jay Printz and Richard Mack, the CLEOs for Ravalli County, Montana, and Graham County, Arizona, respectively, filed separate actions challenging the constitutionality of the Brady Act's interim provisions. They objected to the use of congressional action to compel state officers to execute Federal law.

Lower court decisions

In each case, the District Court held that the provision requiring CLEOs to perform background checks was unconstitutional, but concluded that that provision was severable from the remainder of the Act, effectively leaving a voluntary background check system in place. A divided panel of the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit reversed, finding none of the Brady Act's interim provisions to be unconstitutional.

Majority decision

The majority of five justices ruled that the interim provisions of the Brady Bill are unconstitutional. In his opinion, Justice Scalia states that, although there is no constitutional text precisely responding to the challenge, an answer can be found “in historical understanding and practice, the structure of the Constitution, and in the jurisprudence of this Court.”

Historical understanding and practice

Scalia concedes that legislation compelling judges to carry out Federal legislation has been passed. But he considers that the nature of the courts, which occupy a vertical hierarchy that requires consideration of prior decisions by Federal or state courts, exempts this from applying in this case. Furthermore, contrasting the frequency of legislation applying to judicial courts to the absence of legislation applying to state executives to show this power was not granted.


The structure of the Constitution

Scalia refers to the “dual sovereignty” established by the U.S. Constitution that federalism is built upon. His opinion states that the Framers designed the Constitution to allow Federal regulation of international and interstate matters, not internal matters reserved to the State Legislatures. The majority arrives at the conclusion that allowing the Federal government to draft the police officers of the 50 states into its service would increase its powers far beyond what the Constitution intends.

The Court also offered an alternative basis for striking down the provision: it violated the constitutional separation of powers by robbing the president of his power to execute the laws; that is, it contradicted the "unitary executive theory". The Court explained

We have thus far discussed the effect that federal control of state officers would have upon the first element of the "double security" alluded to by Madison: the division of power between State and Federal Governments. It would also have an effect upon the second element: the separation and equilibration of powers between the three branches of the Federal Government itself. The Constitution does not leave to speculation who is to administer the laws enacted by Congress; the President, it says, "shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed," Art. II, §3, personally and through officers whom he appoints (save for such inferior officers as Congress may authorize to be appointed by the "Courts of Law" or by "the Heads of Departments" who with other presidential appointees), Art. II, §2. The Brady Act effectively transfers this responsibility to thousands of CLEOs in the 50 States, who are left to implement the program without meaningful Presidential control (if indeed meaningful Presidential control is possible without the power to appoint and remove). The insistence of the Framers upon unity in the Federal Executive—to insure both vigor and accountability—is well known. See The Federalist No. 70 (A. Hamilton); 2 Documentary History of the Ratification of the Constitution 495 (M. Jensen ed. 1976) (statement of James Wilson); see also Calabresi & Prakash, The President's Power to Execute the Laws, 104 Yale L. J. 541 (1994). That unity would be shattered, and the power of the President would be subject to reduction, if Congress could act as effectively without the President as with him, by simply requiring state officers to execute its laws.

Finally, the majority cited previous rulings by the Supreme Court in similar situations. They relied on New York v. United States, wherein the Court ruled a Federal bill compelling States to enact legislation to provide for radioactive waste disposal was unconstitutional because it violated the Tenth Amendment; thus, a precedent was set prohibiting the Federal government from compelling a state to enforce a Federal regulatory program.

The dissent

In his dissent, Justice Stevens suggests the Commerce clause of the Constitution, giving the Federal government the right to regulate handgun sales, can be coupled with the Necessary and Proper Clause, giving Congress the power to pass whatever laws are necessary and proper to carry out its previously enumerated power. Federal direction of state officials in this manner is analogous to ordering the mass inoculation of children to forestall an epidemic, or directing state officials to respond to a terrorist threat. He is very concerned with the ability of the federal government to respond to a national emergency and does not believe that "there is anything in the 10th amendment 'in historical understanding and practice, in the structure of the Constitution, or in the jurisprudence of this Court,' that forbids the enlistment of state officers to make that response effective." Moreover, the text of the Constitution does not support the Majority's apparent proposition that "a local police officer can ignore a command contained in a statute enacted by Congress pursuant to an express delegation of power enumerated in Article I."

Effects of the decision

The immediate effects of the ruling on the Brady Bill were negligible. The vast majority of local and state law enforcement officials supported the interim provisions and were happy to comply with the background checks, unconstitutional or not. The issue ended with the completion of the federal background check database. However, Printz v. United States was an important ruling in support of limits on Federal power and States' Rights.

The political poles have reversed from Printz, especially after the attack on the World Trade Center; where Printz protected conservative local authorities from liberal federal power, it also now protects liberal local authorities from conservative federal power. Professor Ann Althouse has suggested, retained in its strong form, the anti-commandeering doctrine announced in Printz "can work as a safeguard for the rights of the people";"the federal government might go too far in prosecuting the war on terrorism," Printz provides a circuit-breaker that might allow local and state officials to refuse to enforce regulations curbing individual rights. Moreover, "[b]y denying the means of commandeering to the federal government, the courts have created an incentive [for Congress] to adopt policies that inspire [rather than demand] compliance, thus preserving a beneficial structural safeguard for individual rights," and "state and local government autonomy can exert pressure on the federal government to moderate its efforts and take care not to offend constitutional rights."[1]

See also

References

Text document with red question mark.svg
 This article includes a list of references, related reading or external links, but its sources remain unclear because it lacks inline citations. Please improve this article by introducing more precise citations where appropriate. (July 2009)
  1. ^ Althouse, Ann, Professor. The Vigor of the Anti-Commandeering Doctrine in Times of Terror, 69 Brook. L. Rev. 1231 (2004).

External sources

Search Wikisource Wikisource has original text related to this article:
  • ^  Text of Printz v. United States, 521 U.S. 898 (1997) is available from:  · Enfacto · Findlaw

This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)

 
 

 

Copyrights:

US Supreme Court. The Oxford Companion to the Supreme Court of the United States. Copyright © 1992, 2005 by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.  Read more
Wikipedia. This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Printz v. United States".  Read more