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One more take on Sotomayer and the status of the Second Amendment

By Douglas A. Berman

Today's edition of the Wall Street Journal includes this editorial headlined "Second Amendment Confidential: Sotomayor takes the Fifth on gun rights." Here are excerpts: Now making their way to the Court are cases about whether the right to bear arms also applies to the 50 states via the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.  If it doesn't, then Heller is a hollow shell.... The Fourteenth Amendment was drafted in part to address the rights of freed slaves to carry a weapon against the efforts of some Southern states to proscribe that right.  Coming as the right to bear arms does in the Bill of Rights only after the freedom of speech, we think there's little doubt the Founders considered the Second Amendment "fundamental" enough to apply everywhere...continue to full post

Full post as published by Sentencing Law and Policy on July 18, 2009 (boomark / email).