VOLUME 170, ISSUE 3 February 2022

From the first days of the United States, the story of sovereignty has not been one of a simple division between the federal government and the states of the Union. Then, as today, American Indian tribes persisted as self-governing peoples with ongoing and important political relationships with the United States. And then, as today, there was debate about the proper legal characterization of those relationships. The United States Supreme Court confronted that debate in McGirt v. Oklahoma when, in an opinion by Justice Neil Gorsuch, it held that the reservation of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation “persists today.” The Court’s recognition of the persistence of Tribal sovereignty triggered a flurry of critical commentary, including from federal lawmakers who share Justice Gorsuch’s commitment to originalism. But the early history of federal Indian law supports the persistence of tribal sovereignty.

Federal gun prosecutions have been a significant part of the federal docket for decades. In this Article, we explore for the first time the evolution of federal gun crimes. They cover conduct ranging from gun distribution and possession of particular weapons such as machine guns to use by drug traffickers and individual possession of firearms by felons. Second, we describe how in practice gun charges have adapted to criminal law priorities of Congress and federal prosecutors over time. More recently, they became prominent in connection with immigration prosecutions, while in the 1980s, drug gangs were the priority. During this time, gun cases provided vehicles for testing the reach of federal jurisdiction, the use of federal crimes as sentencing enhancements, and the boundaries between federal, state, and local enforcement.

The Constitution seems silent about who may end a war and how they may do so. There is no “declare peace” clause, and scholarship has long neglected this matter. Yet given two “Forever Wars,” considerable fatigue with both, and numerous demands to end them, the question of how to end hostilities is exceptionally salient. We conduct an overdue dissection and reveal that the Constitution charts many paths to peace.