Wolford v. Lopez · ¶147
Conceptualizing Hawaii’s law as “flipping the default,” ante, at 10, misses the point: State law supplies the default. Yes, the historical custom in most States set the consent rule to be implicit in most circumstances. But that custom was by no means universal—as I have explained, some States decided that consent to carry firearms onto private property must be explicit. And in every instance, the States retained the power to determine whether the required consent could be implied or had to be explicit. See Barnhill v. Johnson, 503 U. S. 393, 398 (1992) (“In the absence of any controlling federal law, ‘property’ and ‘interests in property’ are creatures of state law” (citing McKenzie v. Irving Trust Co., 323 U. S. 365, 370 (1945))); Phillips Petroleum Co. v. Mississippi, 484 U. S. 469, 484 (1988) (noting the “general proposition [that] the law of real property is, under our…Read in context ›
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