Justia columnist and U.C., Davis law professor Vikram David Amar argues that there are serious Seventeenth Amendment issues plaguing the Hawaii law that resulted in the temporary appointment of Senator Schatz, after Hawaii Senator Inouye had passed away. More specifically, Amar explains, Hawaii law provides that its Governor shall make a temporary appointment to fill a Senate vacancy by selecting a person from a list of three prospective appointees submitted by the same political party to which the prior incumbent had belonged. Amar questions the constitutionality of Hawaii's procedure with respect to the three-prospective-appointee list and how it is composed.

Justia columnist, George Washington law professor, and economist Neil Buchanan sharply critiques the tax deal that was just passed. Buchanan contends that the big picture here is very different from that painted by Beltway insiders in the run-up to the deal, in important ways. To support his points, Buchanan covers the basics of the deal; points out that merely because both sides were disappointed does not mean that a good deal was struck; and questions the need for the deal in light of the fact that the long-term budget situation looks significantly better than most people think, in part because certain pessimistic assumptions about health-care costs have so far not proven true.

In the second in this two-part series of columns on constitutional gun regulation, Cornell law professor Michael Dorf comments on the ways in which the Supreme Court may interpret the Second Amendment, after the Newtown, Connecticut massacre. In particular, Dorf notes subtleties of interpretation that may matter greatly in this area of constitutional law. In particular, Dorf comments on the difference between living constitutionalism and originalism, and the difference between old originalism and new originalism. Dorf also takes Justice Scalia to task for not fully practicing what he preaches, harkening back to Scalia’s recent comment that the Constitution is “dead, dead, dead.”