Civil and Human Rights

Second Amendment Rights and States

Details

Tuesday, March 2, 2010
5:15 pm
Cato Institute

Participants talked about gun control laws and a Supreme Court case scheduled to be argued the following day.

In 2008, the U.S. Supreme Court, in District of Columbia v. Heller, struck down Washington, D.C.’s ban on handguns and found that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to keep and bear arms. On March 2, 2010, in McDonald v. City of Chicago, the Court will hear oral arguments on whether that right applies to states and localities. The Court is expected to hold that it does: a key purpose of the Fourteenth Amendment, ratified at the height of Reconstruction in 1868, was to allow newly freed slaves and white Unionists to defend themselves against Southern reprisals by protecting their right to keep and bear arms. But if the Court reaches that result via the Due Process Clause or the Privileges or Immunities Clause, which was specifically enacted to protect various individual rights, including particularly the right to armed self-defense, would help determine the future of gun rights in America and also constitutional law generally, because it could lead to the re-invigoration of a variety of important liberties that courts have long neglected.

More from Civil and Human Rights

Civil and Human Rights
February 28, 2024

“I Am Free But Without A Cent”: Economic Justice As Equal Citizenship

93 Geo. Wash. L. Rev. (forthcoming 2025).
By: David H. Gans
Civil and Human Rights
U.S. Supreme Court

Chiaverini v. City of Napoleon, Ohio

In Chiaverini v. City of Napoleon, the Supreme Court is considering whether police officers who file baseless criminal charges against a person are exempt from liability simply because the officers also filed other charges against...
Civil and Human Rights
February 5, 2024

Announcing CAC’s Inaugural Scholar-in-Residence, Professor Alexis Hoag-Fordjour

The Constitutional Accountability Center is pleased to announce that it has selected Professor Alexis Hoag-Fordjour...
Civil and Human Rights
January 31, 2024

Ending US jail workers’ slavery clause ‘could net billions’

Context
What’s the context? Here's how this study quantifies the benefits of ending the 'exception clause'...
By: Miriam Becker-Cohen, David Sherfinski
Civil and Human Rights
December 6, 2023

Supreme Court appears likely to ease process for workplace discrimination claims

The Washington Post
The Supreme Court seemed prepared on Wednesday to make it easier for workers to pursue...
By: Brianne J. Gorod, Ann E. Marimow
Civil and Human Rights
December 6, 2023

RELEASE: Focus on Hypotheticals at Supreme Court Argument this Morning Shouldn’t Distract from the Question in this Case and Title VII’s Answer

WASHINGTON, DC – Following oral argument at the Supreme Court this morning in Muldrow v....
By: Brianne J. Gorod