US. v. Lopez :: essays research papers

U.S. v. Lopez514 U.S. 549 (1995), Vote of 5 to 4, Rehnquist for the court. sexual relation in 1990 enacted the Gun-Free give instruction zona Act, making it a national offence to possess a art object in a school zone. Congress relied on the government agency of the profession Clause of the Constitution to justify passage of legislation as a way of stemming the rising tide of gun related incidents in national schools. In 1992 Alfonso Lopez, Jr. was a senior at Edison High educate in San Antonio, Texas. Acting on an anonymous tip, school authorities confronted Lopez and ascertained that he was carrying a .38 caliber handgun and five bullets. A national grand jury subsequently indicted Lopez, who then moved to have the indictment dismissed on grounds that the federal government had no authority to legislate control over the public schools. At a terrace trial, the federal district court judge found Lopez guilty and sentenced him to sixer months imprisonment and two years super vised release. Lopez then appealed to the Fifth Circuit, which change the conviction and held the Gun-Free School Zone Act unconstitutional as an disable exercise dy congress of the commerce power.The Lopez case posed the dubiousness of the extent to which Congress could exercise authority over street iniquity and, in so doing, intrude into constitutional space traditionally meshed by the states. Since the New Deal of the 1930s, the Supreme Court had accepted that Congress had broad authority to regulate virtually every aspect of American life under the cover of the federal Commerce Clause. Moreover, the bombing of the federal office building in Okalahoma City, while it had occurred after the passage of the Gun-Free School Zone Act, created a political environment where the Clinton administration and the Republican congressional leaders believed that the federal government had to combat domestic terrorist groups and the weapons that they used.The case force considerable attent ion from diverse interest groups. The National Education Association, for example, conjugate with the Clinton administration and various antigun groups to argue that schools had experienced difficulty in use gun related crimes. Soliciter General Drew S. age argued that the law was contrastive from other statutes dealing with firearms in that it targeted possession rather than sale. Yet Days also insisted that a close connection existed between violence in schools and the movement of guns in interstate commerce. The government insisted that guns were often used as part of the drug culture that was itself carried on through national commerce.