Professor Royce Barondes recently had an article accepted for publication in the Texas Review of Law & Politics. In the article, he examines contemporary jurisprudence holding a person who has a prior felony conviction is not “virtuous” and, thus, has forfeited his or her rights under the Second Amendment.

The article surveys the circumstances in which contemporary courts have relied on a person being deemed not “virtuous” as a basis for depriving him or her of an enumerated right. Outside the context of the Second Amendment, those cases are rare, typically discredited and used to validate odious outcomes. Prof. Barondes suggests the opinions relying on this discredited principle, and their proponents, ought to be known by the intellectual company that they keep.

The article is the most recent installment of works concerning firearms rights that Prof. Barondes has authored addressing issues that appear likely to be the subject of litigation in the near term. It follows an earlier work of his, which was extensively cited by the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, Commonwealth v. Hicks, 208 A.3d 916 (Pa. 2019).

A pre-publication copy of the article is available — “The Odious Intellectual Company of Authority Restricting Second Amendment Rights to the ‘Virtuous'”.