Law Commons^™

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 …

From Grotius to Hobbes to Locke to an unconventional modern pop-culture manifestation in Ali G, the concept of “respect” has always been understood as important in human interaction and human agreements. The concept of mutual understanding and obligation pervades human interaction, and, for purposes of this Article, international relations. Almost all basic principles in English, United States, and other country’s laws that value human and individual rights have based, over time, the development of their laws on the philosophical principle of respect. So much of common and statutory law is designed to enforce respect for others. The principle question in …