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Speaking Truth To Firepower: How The First Amendment Destabilizes The Second, Gregory P. Magarian
Speaking Truth To Firepower: How The First Amendment Destabilizes The Second, Gregory P. Magarian
Gregory P. Magarian
When the Supreme Court in District of Columbia v. Heller declared that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to keep and bear arms, it set atop the federal judicial agenda the critical task of elaborating the new right’s scope, limits, and content. Following Heller, commentators routinely draw upon the First Amendment’s protections for expressive freedom to support their proposals for Second Amendment doctrine. In this article, Professor Magarian advocates a very different role for the First Amendment in explicating the Second, and he contends that our best understanding of First Amendment theory and doctrine severely diminishes the Second Amendment’s …
Justice Stevens, Religion, And Civil Society, Gregory P. Magarian
Justice Stevens, Religion, And Civil Society, Gregory P. Magarian
Gregory P. Magarian
Did Justice John Paul Stevens, who retired from the Supreme Court last year, harbor a bias against religion? During his 35 years on the Court, Justice Stevens showed little favor for religious claimants. In Establishment Clause cases he advocated a strong doctrine of separation between church and state. In the most contentious Free Exercise Clause cases, he flatly opposed exempting religious believers from laws that interfered with their religious exercise. This combination of positions, unique among the Justices of the Burger, Rehnquist, and Roberts Courts, has led commentators to charge Justice Stevens with disdain for religion. In this article, Professor …
Religious Argument, Free Speech Theory, And Democratic Dynamism, Gregory P. Magarian
Religious Argument, Free Speech Theory, And Democratic Dynamism, Gregory P. Magarian
Gregory P. Magarian
Political theorists have long debated whether liberal democratic norms of public political debate should constrain political arguments grounded in religious beliefs or similar conscientious commitments. In this Article, Professor Magarian contends that normative insights from free speech theory have salience for this controversy and should ultimately lead us to reject any normative constraint on religious argument. On the restrictive side of the debate stand prominent liberal theorists, led by John Rawls, who maintain that arguments grounded in religion and other comprehensive commitments threaten liberal democracy by offering illegitimate grounds for government action and destabilizing democratic politics. On the permissive side …