Digital Commons Network^™

Salazar V. Buono: Sacred Symbolism And The Secular State, Ian C. Bartrum

Ian C Bartrum

This short piece discusses some doctrinal and theoretical implications of the Court's recent decision.

The Constitutional Canon As Argumentative Metonymy, Ian C. Bartrum

Ian C Bartrum

This article builds on Philip Bobbitt's Wittgensteinian insights into constitutional argument and law. I examine the way that we interact with canonical texts as we construct arguments in the forms that Bobbitt has described. I contend that these texts serve as metonyms for larger sets of associated principles and values, and that their invocation usually is not meant to point to the literal meaning of the text itself. This conception helps explain how a canonical text's meaning in constitutional argument can evolve over time, and hopefully offers the creative practitioner some insight into the kinds of arguments that might accomplish …

The Keystone Of The Second Amendment: Quakers, The Pennsylvania Constitution, And The Questionable Scholarship Of Nathan Kozuskanich, David B. Kopel, Clayton Cramer

David B Kopel

Historian Nathan Kozuskanich claims that the Second Amendment-like the arms provision of the 1776 Pennsylvania Constitution-is only a guarantee of a right of individuals to participate in the militia, in defense of the polity. Kozuskanich’s claim about the Second Amendment is based on two articles he wrote about the original public meaning of the right to arms in Pennsylvania, including the 1776 and 1790 Pennsylvania constitutional arms guarantees.

Part I of this Article provides a straightforward legal history of the right to arms provisions in the 1776 Pennsylvania Constitution and of the 1790 Pennsylvania Constitution. We examine Kozuskanich’s claims about …