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Joseph Blocher

Bio: Joseph Blocher is an academic researcher from Duke University. The author has contributed to research in topics: Constitutional law & Doctrine. The author has an hindex of 7, co-authored 71 publications receiving 382 citations. Previous affiliations of Joseph Blocher include University of Notre Dame & University of Tulsa.


Papers
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Joseph Blocher1
TL;DR: In this article, the Second Amendment should be read to encompass both the right to keep or bear arms for self-defense and the inverse right to protect oneself by avoiding them, and what practical implications, if any, the latter right would have.
Abstract: Sometimes a constitutional right to do a particular thing is accompanied by a right not to do that thing. The First Amendment, for example, guarantees both the right to speak and the right not to speak. This Article asks whether the Second Amendment should likewise be read to encompass both the right to keep or bear arms for self-defense and the inverse right to protect oneself by avoiding them, and what practical implications, if any, the latter right would have. The Article concludes - albeit with some important qualifications - that a right not to keep or bear arms is implied by what the Supreme Court has called the “core” and “central component” of the Second Amendment: self-defense, especially in the home. Recognizing such a right might call into question the constitutionality of the growing number of “antigun control” laws that make it difficult or illegal for private individuals to avoid having guns in their actual or constructive possession.

7 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the authors present a legal solution to the modern refugee crisis by recognizing that persecuted refugee groups have a financial claim against their countries of origin, and that this claim can be traded to host nations in exchange for acceptance.
Abstract: The unprecedented scale of the modern refugee crisis demands novel legal solutions, and new ways of summing the political will to implement them. As a matter of national incentives, the goal must be to design mechanisms that discourage countries of origin from creating refugees, and encourage host countries to welcome them. One way to achieve this would be to recognize that persecuted refugee groups have a financial claim against their countries of origin, and that this claim can be traded to host nations in exchange for acceptance. Modifications to the international apparatus would be necessary, but the basic legal elements of this proposal already exist. In short, international law can and should give refugees a legal asset, give host nations incentives to accept them, and give oppressive countries of origin the bill.

6 citations

Journal Article
TL;DR: In this article, the Second Amendment should be read to encompass both the right to keep or bear arms for self-defense and the inverse right to protect oneself by avoiding arms, and what practical implications, if any, the latter right would have.
Abstract: Sometimes a constitutional right to do a particular thing is accompanied by a right not to do that thing. The First Amendment, for example, guarantees both the right to speak and the right not to speak This Article asks whether the Second Amendment should likewise be read to encompass both the right to keep or bear arms for self-defense and the inverse right to protect oneself by avoiding arms, and what practical implications, if any, the latter right would have. The Article concludes albeit with some important qualifications that a right not to keep or bear arms is implied by what the Supreme Court has called the "core" and "central component" of the Second Amendment: self-defense, especially in the home. Recognizing such a right might call into question the constitutionality of the growing number of "anti-gun control" laws that make it difficult or illegal for private individuals to avoid having guns in their actual or constructive possession. Language: en

6 citations

01 Jan 2009
TL;DR: In the virtual reputational economy, reputation is not merely valuable; it is the new New Property as mentioned in this paper, and reputation can be gained, lost, traded, protected, and shared in a property-like fashion, without regard to whether it has independent economic value.
Abstract: Economists and legal theorists have long argued that real-world economies cannot function effectively without well-defined property rights. More recently, scholars have also begun to analyze at least three kinds of “virtual” economies: the online economies exemplified by eBay and other tradefacilitating mechanisms; the economies in virtual worlds such as Second Life and World of Warcraft; and the virtual reputational economies associated with MySpace and Facebook. The first two economies generally involve the exchange of familiar forms of property. But scholars have thus far failed to fully identify or analyze the property underlying the reputational economy. What that economy demonstrates, especially in its virtual form, is that reputation itself—social status and the respect of others—can usefully be understood as a form of property. Strands of this theory appear in law and scholarship, but they have not been tied together in a way that shows that reputation can be property-like even without demonstrating economic value. Virtual reputational economies show that reputation can be gained, lost, traded, protected, and shared, all in property-like fashion, without regard to whether it has independent economic value. In other words, reputation is not merely valuable; it is the new New Property.

6 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
Joseph Blocher1
TL;DR: State supreme courts and the United States Supreme Court are the independent and final arbiters of their respective constitutions, and may therefore take different approaches to analogous issues under those constitutions.
Abstract: State supreme courts and the United States Supreme Court are the independent and final arbiters of their respective constitutions, and may therefore take different approaches to analogous issues under those constitutions. Such issues are common because the documents were modeled after one another and contain many of the same guarantees. In answering them, state courts have, as a matter of practice, generally adopted federal constitutional doctrine as their own. Federal courts, by contrast, have largely ignored state constitutional law when interpreting the federal Constitution. In McDonald v. City of Chicago, to take one recent and high-profile example, the Court declined to adopt the state courts’ near-unanimous conclusion that the proper standard of review for regulations of the “individual” right to keep and bear arms is a form of “reasonableness” review.In an age of growing international comparativism, this lack of intranational borrowing is striking, especially since state constitutions served as the template for the federal Constitution and generally protect the same rights as are found in the federal Bill of Rights. In a constitutional system that claims to be committed to federalism and respect for the states, why is it that state constitutional law has had such a slight impact on federal constitutional doctrine? This Article seeks to answer that question, and suggests that in certain circumstances federal courts should look to state constitutional law when faced with analogous federal constitutional controversies.

5 citations


Cited by
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13 Mar 2016
TL;DR: The case of Nitokalisi Fonua (hereinafter, "Nick") as mentioned in this paper, who admitted to stealing a white GMC Blazer from a motel room at the Days Inn in Utah.
Abstract: FACTS An officer in Midvale, Utah was doing some paperwork in his patrol car when he was approached by man, later identified as Nitokalisi Fonua (hereinafter, “Nick”). Nick “looked suspicious,” mainly because he was “jittery, looking around and appeared to be very nervous.” Nick’s suspicion rating jumped dramatically when, for no apparent reason, he informed the officer he had stolen a white GMC Blazer, which he had parked nearby. Naturally, the officer asked Nick if he would show him the Blazer, and Nick said sure. When they located the Blazer, the officer walked over and looked inside. The first thing he saw was a sawed-off shotgun on the back seat. Then he noticed some markings on the shotgun, “markings that looked gang-related.” Nick told the officer that the key to the Blazer was inside his motel room at the Days Inn. Also in the room, he said, were his “cousins,” meaning “people he knows from the streets.” The officer asked Nick “if we could obtain the keys to the vehicle so we could turn those back over to the owner.” Nick said the keys “were in the room somewhere” and that he “didn’t care” if the officer went in and retrieved them. Nick also gave the officer his key to the room. When backup arrived at the motel, officers knocked on the door which was opened by a man named Vake. There were two other occupants: a woman and Kimoana, the defendant. By this time, the officers were aware that Kimoana—not Nick—had rented the room. The first thing the officers saw as the door opened was the woman pointing “an unidentified black object” at the wall. Concerned for their safety, they ordered the occupants to “show their hands.” Then they pat searched them. Finding no weapons (the “unidentified black object” was a television remote control), they holstered their guns. Although the officers already had Nick’s consent to search the room, they sought and obtained consent from Vake. During the search, they found a “long-barreled revolver” under a mattress. As the result, Kimoana was convicted of being a felon in possession of a firearm.

483 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the impacts and impact of biofuel feedstock development in Ghana were analyzed and it was found that companies are accessing large contiguous areas of customary land through opaque negotiations with traditional authorities, often outside the purview of government and customary land users.
Abstract: The rapidly growing biofuel sector in Africa has, in recent years, been received with divided interest. As part of a contemporary wave of agricultural modernization efforts, it could make invaluable contributions to rural poverty. Conversely, it could also engender socioeconomically and environmentally detrimental land use changes as valuable land resources are converted to plantation agriculture. This research analyzes the impacts and impact pathways of biofuel feedstock development in Ghana. It finds that companies are accessing large contiguous areas of customary land through opaque negotiations with traditional authorities, often outside the purview of government and customary land users. Despite lack of participation, most customary land users were highly supportive of plantation development, with high expectations of ‘development' and ‘modernization.' With little opposition and resistance, large areas of agricultural and forested land are at threat of being converted to plantation monoculture. A case study analysis shows that this can significantly exacerbate rural poverty as communities lose access to vital livelihood resources. Vulnerable groups, such as women and migrants, are found to be most profoundly affected because of their relative inability in recovering lost livelihood resources. Findings suggest that greater circumspection by government is warranted on these types of large-scale land deals.

229 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, an alternative viewpoint on why people choose to engage in artisanal mining for extended periods in sub-Saharan Africa is presented, drawing upon experiences from Akwatia, Ghana's epicentre of diamond production since the mid-1920s.

165 citations

Book
20 Jun 2018
TL;DR: In this article, the authors analyze resource governance from the late nineteenth century to the present in Bolivia, Ghana, Peru, and Zambia, focusing on the ways in which resource governance and national political settlements interact.
Abstract: Proposals for more effective natural resource governance emphasize the importance of institutions and governance, but say less about the political conditions under which institutional change occurs. This book synthesizes findings regarding the political drivers of institutional change in extractive industry governance. The authors analyse resource governance from the late nineteenth century to the present in Bolivia, Ghana, Peru, and Zambia. They focus on the ways in which resource governance and national political settlements interact. Special attention is paid to the nature of elite politics, the emergence of new political actors, forms of political contention, changing ideas regarding natural resources and development, the geography of natural resource deposits, and the influence of the transnational political economy of global commodity production. National elites and subnational actors are in continuous contention over extractive industry governance. Resource rents are used by elites to manage this contention and incorporate actors into governing coalitions and overall political settlements. Periodically, new resource frontiers are opened, and new political actors emerge with the power to redefine how extractive industries are governed and used as instruments for development. Colonial and post-colonial histories of resource extraction continue to give political valence to ideas of resource nationalism that mobilize actors who challenge existing institutional arrangements. The book is innovative in its focus on the political longue durée, and the use of in-depth, comparative, country-level analysis in Africa and Latin America, to build a theoretical argument that accounts for both similarity and divergence between these regions.

108 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the issue of land tenure and how it influences artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) activity in Ghana is examined and shown to contribute significantly towards proliferation of illegal ASM activity and hence potentially challenges attempts by governments and development partners to formalise the sector.

106 citations