Cornell on the Second Amendment's History

Check out Saul Cornell's piece at the Daily Beast on the history of the second amendment.  Here is a short excerpt:

If the Heller court had simply said, “Look, most Americans think the Amendment is about an individual right, and no one really cares what James Madison or the average man on the street in 1791 thought”—then the case would be pretty uncontroversial. Instead, Scalia produced a pompous, error-filled opinion that has done more to discredit his beloved originalism than a generation of liberal academics ever could.

I'm sure Saul's Well Regulated Militia and the rest of his body of work of applied legal history will be getting renewed attention in the coming months.

Comments

[Tamara Piety]

Look forward to reading this!

[Brando Simeo Starkey]

Very good piece. What makes Scalia's brand of faux Originalism so reprehensible is that he clearly believes in a living Constitution. But his ahistorical declarations about what the Founding Fathers thought preempts a robust analysis of how his decisions will affect contemporary society because he argues that we must be guided by the original understanding of constitutional language. So he gets to recreate history in light of his politics but never has to defend his political views. He puts his words in the mouths of people long dead, a very clever ventriloquist trick indeed. But such intellectual maneuvers are not befitting of a Supreme Court Justice.

[Kiefer]

a very good informative post! looking forward to see this. Excited!

[Whidby]

"If the Heller court had simply said, “Look, most Americans think the Amendment is about an individual right, and no one really cares what James Madison or the average man on the street in 1791 thought”—then the case would be pretty uncontroversial"

That's colossally stupid.