Tuesday, February 19, 2008

For all the gun fans and phobes, and legal buffs, out there:

Roger Williams University School of Law is hosting a debate on the meaning of the Second Amendment featuring two nationally known experts, Harvard Law Professor Mark Tushnet and Roger Williams Law Professor Carl Bogus. The debate will be this Wednesday, February 20, 2008, at 12:00 p.m.in Room 262 at the School of Law, Ten Metacom Avenue, Bristol. The event is open to the public.

 

Professor Mark Tushnet is the William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Law at Harvard Law School.  He has authored 18 books, most recently Out of Range: Why the Constitution Can't End the Battle Over Guns, in which he critiques the traditional "individual rights vs. collective rights" debate. Professor Tushnet argues that the Second Amendment reflects our sense of ourselves as a people, and that the answer to the debate will not be found in a "holy writ," but in our values and our vision of the nation. He will sign copies of Out of Range following the debate.

 

Professor Carl Bogus is a national expert on the meaning and history of the Second Amendment.  He is the author of several articles including,

"What Does the Second Amendment Restrict?  A Collective Rights Analysis and The Hidden History of the Second Amendment." Bogus is the editor of the book, The Second Amendment in Law and History: Historians and Scholars on the Right to Bear Arms.  He argues that historical studies and legal precedent both demonstrate a Second Amendment guarantee of a collective right to bear arms – but only within an established militia.

 

The debate comes one month before the U.S. Supreme Court hears oral arguments in District of Columbia v. Heller, the first Supreme Court review of the Second Amendment since United States v. Miller in 1939.

 

This event is being co-sponsored by the Roger Williams University School of Law chapters of the American Constitution Society and the American Civil Liberties Union.