Congratulations on CLI Faculty Publishing Op-Ed on Supreme Court Gun Regulation Case
Last week, Professor Kevin Tobia , Professor Nathan Schneider , and Dr. Brandon Waldon published an op-ed in The Hill on Garland v. VanDerStok, a high-profile gun regulation case which was heard at the Supreme Court two weeks ago. The case revolves around a key legal question: how to interpret the statutory definition of “firearm” in federal law. Specifically, does this definition extend to disassembled firearm kits sold online? The op-ed builds on their amicus brief and associated journal article , where they argue that insights from linguistic theory and empirical linguistic methods can help resolve this complex issue of legal interpretation.
The photo is taken outside the Supreme Court building featuring the NERT lab attendees. From top left, clockwise: Abhishek Purushothama (CS PhD student), Devika Tiwari (Computational Linguistics PhD student), Meru Gopalan (senior at Montgomery Blair High School), Micaela Wells (undergraduate MDI fellow and BA student in Biology and Linguistics), Brandon Waldon (Fritz fellow and postdoc in CS and Linguistics; also affiliated with MDI), and Nathan Schneider (Associate Professor in CS and Linguistics). All are conducting computational linguistics research under Professor Nathan Schneider’s NERT lab.