Professor Ian Ayres’ Scholarship Cited in Supreme Court Gun Control Case

Professor Ian Ayres ’86, a lawyer and an economist, has been ranked as one of the most prolific and most-cited law professors of their generation and hailed as “a law-and-economics guru” by The Chronicle of Higher Education. In addition to their appointment as the Oscar M. Ruebhausen Professor at Yale Law School, they hold faculty positions at the Yale School of Management and the Yale School of Public Health, and have been a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences since 2006.

Ayres has authored many books, including “Weapon of Choice: Fighting Gun Violence While Respecting Gun Rights” (with Fredrick Vars ’99, professor at the University of Alabama School of Law) published by Harvard University Press in 2020, and their work has been featured by major media outlets including Forbes, The New York Times, and Time. 

In the Q&A below, Ayres discussed a case currently before the Supreme Court, Wolford v. Lopez, which draws on his scholarship related to gun control. Ayres joined an amicus brief filed with the Court, signed by property law professors from across the country, supporting the respondent. Oral argument in the case will be held on Jan. 20, and former Acting Solicitor General of the United States Neal Katyal '95 will be defending Hawaii's “No Carry” default.

“The Supreme Court will decide whether a state statute can constitutionally flip presumption whether people can carry concealed weapons onto privately owned businesses,” said Ayres.

How does the case tie into your scholarship on gun control?

I’ve been writing about default rules — legal presumptions that can be contracted around — for more than 30 years. Most states presume that businesses are inviting patrons to come armed. Fred Vars and I argued that property owner’s rights would be better protected if the presumption were flipped — so that patrons could not carry guns unless the store told them they could. 

Fred and I first proposed the default change in our 2020 “Weapon of Choice” book. I’ve also empirically looked at the issue. As part of an amazing gun violence seminar that I taught with Abbe Gluck ’00 and Tracey Meares, I co-authored an article with Spurthi Jonnalagadda ’22 in which we surveyed representative adults in all 50 states and found that substantial majorities — in both red and blue states — favored a “No Carry” default.

Five states (California, Hawaii, Maryland, New Jersey, and New York) have enacted statutes flipping the legal presumption. All five statutes have been challenged as violating the Second Amendment. Fred and I have been filing several amicus briefs at the district and the circuit court level and have drafted one for the Supreme Court.

Are there elements to this case that differ from other recent gun control cases?

The case is unlike most gun control cases because it doesn’t concern a legal mandate. It merely concerns a default that landowners are free to displace. The law is fairly clear that private owners can choose to exclude people with guns. The case requires the Supreme Court to grapple with how Second Amendment rights interact with the constitutional right of property owners to exclude. We believe there is no constitutional right to presumptively be able to carry a gun onto other people’s property. My Second Amendment rights end at your property line.