SMNR: Guns and Drugs

• Semester: Fall 2026
• Course ID: 397S
• Credit Hours: 3
• Unique: 31980

Registration Status: Waitlisted

Description

Guns and drugs: This seminar will traverse the litigation landscape of harms to communities resulting from the actions of the firearms industry and harmful pharmaceuticals. The first half of this seminar introduces the tort theory of public nuisance and describes the changing landscape of 21st century mass tort litigation involving public harms – including lead paint, opioids, e-cigarettes, climate change, and environmental pollution. We will explore the novel theory of public nuisance that lawyers and local governments have used to receive compensation from those who have created public nuisances. We will discuss the origins and evolution of the theory of public nuisance from the twelfth century into modern-day American jurisprudence. We will survey the conflicting judicial decisions rooted in common law and statutory interpretation and evaluate the competing arguments for and against the expansion of public nuisance law. The first portion of the course will focus on applications of public nuisance theory to resolve mass torts relating to lead paint, opioids, vaping, and environmental pollution. We will examine the competing theories arguing in favor of and in opposition to the expansion of public nuisance theory to address and remediate modern community harms. The text for this portion of the seminar is Linda S. Mullenix, PUBLIC NUISANCE: THE NEW MASS TORT FRONTIER (Cambridge University Press 2024). The second half of the course comprehensively addresses the changed legal landscape concerning the ability of governments and private citizens to sue gun industry defendants for contributing to and sustaining the gun violence epidemic in the U.S., Mexico, and Latin America. The discussion canvasses federal and state efforts to regulate firearms through gun control measures, arguing that these regulatory measures have proven ineffective to stem the tide of gun violence. We will then examine the Congressional enactment in 2005 of the Protection of Legal Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA) that immunizes the firearms industry from civil liability for gun violence harms. We will discuss the extent to which PLCAA has frustrated the ability of plaintiffs to hold the firearms industry accountable through litigation. We will discuss the theory that recourse to robust consumer protection and mass tort litigation provides the optimal avenue for holding the firearms industry accountable. The analysis highlights three inflection points in the history of gun industry accountability: the 1998 Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement, the Connecticut Sandy Hook Elementary School litigation, and the very recent nine states’ enactment of consumer protection and public nuisance firearms statutes. These innovative statutes have created an avenue for firearms litigation that overcomes the firearm industry’s historical immunity from suit anchored in PLCAA. The text for this portion of the course is Linda S. Mullenix, OUTGUNNED NO MORE: THE NEW ERA OF FIREARMS ACCOUNTABILITY (Cambridge University Press 2025). This is a writing seminar. Each student in the seminar will be required to complete three papers during the semester. Students will choose the weeks in which they wish to submit papers. Each paper will analytically present and discuss issues or debates relating to the weekly reading assignments. Each student, at the beginning of the semester, chooses the paper topics and timing of the papers.