Mexico’s lawsuit against gun makers and distributors

I haven’t been able to post here for the past couple of days because I was readying an article for forthcoming publication. From the Mundane to the Unprecedented to the Lawless: Litigating Civil Cases Against Firearms Industry Actors discusses, among other things, Estados Unidos Mexicanos v. Smith & Wesson, a case on which the U.S. Supreme Court just heard oral argument, on March 4, 2025. Here’s the abstract for my article.

This article closely analyzes the government of Mexico’s effort to use the U.S. civil justice system to hold firearms makers and sellers accountable for their role in gun violence in Mexico. The article explicates Mexico’s lawsuit under the provisions ofthe Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, illustrating how using Everytown Law’s recently published guide, Firearms Litigation: A Practitioner’s Guide to PLCAA and Beyond, would assist a practitioner unfamiliar with the PLCAA. The juxtaposition of the Supreme Court’s intervention in the litigation and the guidance provided by the Everytown Manual reveals the split between the sort of scrupulous lawyering embodied in and promoted by the Everytown Manual and the increasingly un-lawlike activity undertaken by the U.S. Supreme Court. The article concludes with some observations about the near impossibility of composing meaningful legal guides and treatises or of helpfully advising clients in the face of a Supreme Court that increasingly ignores substantive and procedural precedents to reinvent the law.

Though written for an academic audience, I think the piece is fairly accessible to all, so I decided to share it here on Heidi Says.