Of Law Reviews, the Printing Epidemic, and Elusive Scholarship—A Theme with Variations

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by A. N. YIANNOPOULOS
Louisiana Law Review Annual Banquet
March 21, 2014
Juban’s Restaurant
Baton Rouge

Editor’s Note:—We are pleased to post Professor A. N. Yiannopoulos’s address to the outgoing and incoming editors of the Louisiana Law Review, Vols. 74 and 75, at the Review’s annual Spring banquet. His reflections are of vital significance to law review editors nationwide, and we have taken seriously his admonition not to print everything under the sun.  However, we wish to pay homage to him by welcoming him back to Ithaca and by posting his remarks, sans footnotes, on the Louisiana Law Review on-line Journal. Professor Baier’s Introduction takes you to the deep-blue waters of Mount Helicon and ends with the fitting lines of Kavafis’s poem Ithaca.

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Up in Smoke: An Update on Louisiana’s Right to Bear Arms

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by K. Connor Long

This past fall, Louisiana residents voted to amend the State’s constitutional right to bear arms. As a result of the amendment, article 1, section 11 of the Louisiana Constitution now reads: “The right of each citizen to keep and bear arms is fundamental and shall not be infringed. Any restriction on this right shall be subject to strict scrutiny.”1 This strict scrutiny judicial review mandate makes Louisiana’s right to bears arms the strongest in the entire country2 and is an immediate threat to any existing and future firearm legislation.3 As many legal scholars and practitioners expected, the passage of this amendment has given rise to a litany of constitutional challenges to existing Louisiana firearm regulations.4 Indeed, the Louisiana Supreme Court has already adjudicated some of these cases; however, so far the firearm regulations have stood their ground against strict scrutiny review and survived these challenges.

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Va. Supreme Court: Virginia Tech Not Liable For Failing to Warn Students During 2007 Mass Shooting

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In the wake of the worst campus murders in American history, the Virginia Supreme Court ruled recently that Virginia Tech is not liable to the families of slain students.1

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Around 7 a.m. on April 16, 2007, Virginia Tech senior Seung-Hui Cho entered a university dorm room and killed two people—one woman shot in the back in her own bed; the other, a male residence assistant, shot in the chest after entering the room to investigate.2 Cho fled the scene without being noticed.3 Campus police responded to the shootings at 7:30 a.m., but the “[p]olice believed that this was an isolated incident that posed no danger to others and that the shooter had fled the area. They did not believe that a campus lockdown was necessary.”4 The police believed the shooting was a domestic violence incident and quickly focused their investigation on the dead woman’s boyfriend.5 Once the boyfriend was found, though, police soon realized that he was not involved.6

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Homeschooling: A Potentially Relevant Factor in Awarding Final Spousal Support

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By Annie Scardulla

Does a parent’s duty to financially support his or her children outweigh a parent’s duty to provide his or her children with an education? This is a question some believe the Louisiana Supreme Court answered in the negative in its recent opinion, Rhymes v. Rhymes.1 Reversing both the district and appellate level courts, the Louisiana Supreme Court held that homeschooling is a potentially relevant legal factor when awarding final spousal support under Louisiana Civil Code articles 111 and 112.2

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The People vs. ObamaCare: Round II

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This term of the Supreme Court of the United States is setting up to be as contentious and pivotal as the last. Just three years after the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act’s (ACA) passage1 and one year after withstanding a challenge to the law’s individual mandate,2 the law, colloquially known as ObamaCare, is poised for its second round of Supreme Court challenges. This time the Court is asked to address whether the law’s abortion and contraceptive mandate violates the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), 42 U.S.C. § 2000(b)(b), and the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment.3

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