Professor Jacob Charles Cited in United States District Court for the District of Delaware in Rigby v. Jennings

Professor Jacob D. Charles's University of Pennsylvania Law Review Article, Ancillary Rights, is cited in the United States District Court for the District of Delaware case Rigby v. Jennings.  The case asks how the current First and Second Amendment analytical landscapes apply to Delaware’s attempts to ban ghost guns.

Excerpt from Rigby v. Jennings:

A predicate act necessary to keeping and bearing firearms is acquiring firearms – if one cannot acquire a firearm, how could one possess a firearm? So the Second Amendment protects acquiring firearms. See e.g., Luis v. United States, 578 U.S. 5, 26-27 (2016) (Thomas, J., concurring) (“Without protection for these closely related rights, the Second Amendment would be toothless.”); Reese v. ATF, 127 F.4th 583, 590 (5th Cir. 2025) (“[T]he right to ‘keep and bear arms’ surely implies the right to purchase them.”); Ezell v. City of Chicago, 651 F.3d 684, 704 (7th Cir. 2011) (“The right to possess firearms for protection implies a corresponding right to acquire and maintain proficiency in their use; the core right wouldn’t mean much without the training and practice that make it effective.”); see also Jacob D. Charles, Ancillary Rights, 173 U. Pa. L. Rev. 1269, 1302 (collecting cases and stating that “[b]ecause the Constitution protects the right to keep a weapon, the ability to acquire that weapon must be an implicit, ancillary right.”).