BAKED BEAN

The highlight of the day yesterday was Justice Thomas's opinion for the Court in United States v. Bean, No. 01-704. Bean properly holds that an agency's non-action on a relief application does not constitute a merits "'denial" for purposes of a statutory judicial review provision. It certainly would have been understandable for Justice Thomas to have strained to find jurisdiction in order to hold that the underlying federal statute prohibiting firearms possession by persons convicted of felonies (including, as in Bean, felonies committed in a foreign jurisdiction) exceeds the Congress's lawmaking power under the Commerce Clause and violates the Second Amendment. But the Fourteenth Circuit applauds Justice Thomas's typically restrained and honest jurisprudence.