Second Amendment
Forum
Between a Rock and a Gun
The Roberts Court has methodically expanded the scope of Second Amendment rights. But in its first Second Amendment case involving a criminal defendant, United States v. Rahimi, the Court blinked. This Essay explores the implications of that decision.
Forum
The Second Amendment’s Second Sex
This Essay explores how the Supreme Court’s Second Amendment doctrine perpetuates gender hierarchies and a male monopoly on lethal self-defense. It critiques the narrow “true man” framing that ignores women’s experiences and advocates for a justice-centered framework that incorporates power and priv…
Forum
History and Tradition’s Equality Problem
This Essay identifies a key feature of the Court’s new history-and-tradition doctrine that has not yet attracted significant attention: outcomes in history-and-tradition cases (involving guns, abortion, etc.) are often driven by hidden, contemporary judgments about equality—judgments whose implicati…
Forum
What It Takes to Write Statutes that Hold the Firearms Industry Accountable to Civil Justice
This Essay defends statutes creating public nuisance and consumer protection causes of action against firearms industry actors for their failure to take reasonable measures to control the flow of their products to criminal users. Such laws are predicate statutes under PLCAA and do not infringe the S…
Article
Originalism-by-Analogy and Second Amendment Adjudication
In New York State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n v. Bruen, the Supreme Court announced a novel historical-analogical approach to constitutional decisionmaking. The Court sought to constrain judicial discretion, but Bruen’s originalism-by-analogy has enabled judicial subjectivity, obfuscation, and unpredictabi…
Note
Antisubordinating the Second Amendment
Racial-justice claims have played an enduring role in the movement and jurisprudential history of the contemporary Second Amendment. This Note argues that, far from a source of equal freedom, our modern expansionist Second Amendment—which reasons in the register of history and tradition—reinforces c…
Article
Bans
Courts have often suggested that “bans” are per se unconstitutional. But what makes a regulation a ban and why should it matter? This Article addresses those questions, which are particularly pressing as the Supreme Court prepares to hear its first Second Amendment case in nearly a decade.