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2006

Constitutional Law

Legal History

Selected Works

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The Catholic Second Amendment, David B. Kopel Jan 2006

The Catholic Second Amendment, David B. Kopel

David B Kopel

At the beginning of the second millennium, there was no separation of church and state, and kings ruled the church. Tyrannicide was considered sinful. By the end of the thirteenth century, however, everything had changed. The Little Renaissance that began in the eleventh century led to a revolution in political and moral philosophy, so that using force to overthrow a tyrannical government became a positive moral duty. The intellectual revolution was an essential step in the evolution of Western political philosophy that eventually led to the American Revolution.


A Cultural Turn: Reflections On Recent Historical And Legal Writing On The Second Amendment Dec 2005

A Cultural Turn: Reflections On Recent Historical And Legal Writing On The Second Amendment

William G. Merkel

If commentators on the Second Amendment agree about anything at all, it is only that disputants parsing the meaning and importance of the constitutional right to arms cannot avoid involvement in a larger cultural war (and this is the term almost everyone employs)I over the meaning and importance (vel non) of gun ownership to the American psyche and soul. Almost every scholar discussed in this short, inexhaustive review of recent literature calls for reasoned moderation (the other calls for well armed chaos),2 but most writers in the field, including this one, and including those who neither own nor wish the …