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William G. Merkel

Selected Works

Articles 1 - 12 of 12

Full-Text Articles in Law

The Authors' Reply To Commentaries On, And Criticisms Of The Militia And The Right To Arms, Or, How The Second Amendment Fell Silent, H. Richard Uviller, William G. Merkel Mar 2019

The Authors' Reply To Commentaries On, And Criticisms Of The Militia And The Right To Arms, Or, How The Second Amendment Fell Silent, H. Richard Uviller, William G. Merkel

William G. Merkel

No abstract provided.

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Heller As Hubris, And How Mcdonald V. City Of Chicago May Well Change The Constitutional World As We Know It, William G. Merkel Mar 2019

Heller As Hubris, And How Mcdonald V. City Of Chicago May Well Change The Constitutional World As We Know It, William G. Merkel

William G. Merkel

No abstract provided.

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Response To “Necessary To The Security Of Free States: The Second Amendment As The Auxiliary Right Of Federalism”, William G. Merkel Nov 2016

Response To “Necessary To The Security Of Free States: The Second Amendment As The Auxiliary Right Of Federalism”, William G. Merkel

William G. Merkel

No abstract provided.

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R. Blake Brown. Arming And Disarming: A History Of Gun Control In Canada., William G. Merkel May 2014

R. Blake Brown. Arming And Disarming: A History Of Gun Control In Canada., William G. Merkel

William G. Merkel

No abstract provided.

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Jefferson In Paris: Rewriting The Problems Of Slavery, Slaveholding, Family And Codependency, William G. Merkel Dec 2013

Jefferson In Paris: Rewriting The Problems Of Slavery, Slaveholding, Family And Codependency, William G. Merkel

William G. Merkel

No abstract provided.

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A Nation Of Laws: America's Imperfect Pursuit Of Justice, William G. Merkel Jun 2012

A Nation Of Laws: America's Imperfect Pursuit Of Justice, William G. Merkel

William G. Merkel

No abstract provided.

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Mcdonald V. City Of Chicago, 130 S.Ct. 3020 (2010), Justice Breyer Dissenting Opinion At Page 911.Pdf, William G. Merkel Dec 2009

Mcdonald V. City Of Chicago, 130 S.Ct. 3020 (2010), Justice Breyer Dissenting Opinion At Page 911.Pdf, William G. Merkel

William G. Merkel

Merkel, The District of Columbia v. Heller and Antonin Scalia's Perverse Sense of Originalism, 13 Lewis & Clark L.Rev. 349 (2009), cited in Justice Breyer's dissenting opinion, beginning on page 3120, at page 3121.

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Parker V. The District Of Columbia And The Hollowness Of Originalist Claims To Principled Neutrality, William G. Merkel Dec 2007

Parker V. The District Of Columbia And The Hollowness Of Originalist Claims To Principled Neutrality, William G. Merkel

William G. Merkel

For many years following the Supreme Court's decision in United States v. Miller,1 the orthodox opinion among academics and federal appeals courts alike was that the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution did not protect possession of firearms unrelated to service in the lawfully established militia. 2 In recent decades, a growing chorus of polemicists, gun rights advocates, single-topic academics, and famously contrarian and exceedingly clever constitutional theorists (Sandy Levinson, Akhil Amar, Larry Tribe, and Randy Barnett among others) have challenged this old understanding on originalist grounds related to both the Second and Fourteenth Amendments.3 While the once dominant …

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Mandatory Gun Ownership, The Militia Census Of 1806, And Background Assumptions Concerning The Early American Right To Arms: A Cautious Response To Robert Churchill, William G. Merkel Dec 2006

Mandatory Gun Ownership, The Militia Census Of 1806, And Background Assumptions Concerning The Early American Right To Arms: A Cautious Response To Robert Churchill, William G. Merkel

William G. Merkel

In "Gun Ownership in Early America," published in the William and Mary Quarterly in 2003,' Robert Churchill drew on probate inventories and militia records to make the case that arms ownership was pervasive in late colonial, revolutionary, and early national America. Churchill concluded with the observation that "[i]t is time to ponder what these guns meant to their owners and how that meaning changed over time."'2 In his substantial contribution to this volume of Law and History Review,3 Churchill takes up that challenge himself and advances the claim that widespread arms ownership engendered a sense of possessory entitlement, and that …

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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 …

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Scottish Factors And The Origins Of The Second Amendment: Some Reflections On David Thomas Konig's Rediscovery Of The Caledonian Background To The American Right To Arms, H. Richard Uviller, William G. Merkel Jan 2004

Scottish Factors And The Origins Of The Second Amendment: Some Reflections On David Thomas Konig's Rediscovery Of The Caledonian Background To The American Right To Arms, H. Richard Uviller, William G. Merkel

William G. Merkel

David Konig has written an important article that makes a welcome contribution to the rapidly evolving field of Second Amendment scholarship.' In the essay that forms the focal piece of this forum, Konig argues that two rival, hotly contested interpretations of the Second Amendment fail to recapture the original meaning of the constitutional right to keep and bear arms. To Konig, neither the individual rights nor the states' rights model of the Second Amendment accurately reflects the conceptual universe shared by the drafters and ratifiers of the Bill of Rights. Neither model (and particularly not the individual rights model), Konig …

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To See Oneself As A Target Of A Justified Revolution: Thomas Jefferson And Gabriel's Uprising, William G. Merkel May 2003

To See Oneself As A Target Of A Justified Revolution: Thomas Jefferson And Gabriel's Uprising, William G. Merkel

William G. Merkel

Examines Jefferson's response to Gabriel's Uprising and argues that Jefferson employed the language of criminal theory in urging Virginia Governor James Monroe to spare the lives of convicted conspirators for the sake of justice and the state's image before the enlightened world. Jefferson's analysis of the slave rebels' acts and intentions makes clear that - at least in abstract, philosophical terms - Jefferson saw the slave uprising as justified, while he viewed white Virginia's resort to deadly force to counter the revolt as at best excusable.

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