[117176] in Cypherpunks
IP: ..Tribe's new views on 2nd amend
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Robert Hettinga)
Fri Aug 27 17:09:01 1999
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Date: Fri, 27 Aug 1999 16:12:33 -0400
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From: Robert Hettinga <rah@shipwright.com>
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From: MikePiet@aol.com
Date: Fri, 27 Aug 1999 14:17:11 EDT
Subject: IP: ..Tribe's new views on 2nd amend
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..From USA Today Mike P
08/27/99- Updated 12:34 AM ET
Scholar's shift in thinking angers liberals
By Tony Mauro, USA TODAY
Publication of the first volume of a revised edition of a legal treatise
would not ordinarily make news.
But even before it began arriving at law schools last week, Laurence Tribe's
American Constitutional Law was causing a stir.
Tribe, a Harvard law professor who is probably the most influential living
American constitutional scholar, says he has already gotten hate mail about
his new interpretation of the right to bear arms contained in the Second
Amendment.
Relegated to a footnote in the first edition of the book in 1978, the right
to bear arms earns Tribe's respect in the latest version.
Tribe, well-known as a liberal scholar, concludes that the right to bear arms
was conceived as an important political right that should not be dismissed as
"wholly irrelevant." Rather, Tribe thinks the Second Amendment assures that
"the federal government may not disarm individual citizens without some
unusually strong justification."
Tribe posits that it includes an individual right, "admittedly of uncertain
scope," to "possess and use firearms in the defense of themselves and their
homes."
None of Tribe's new thinking changes his view that gun-control measures are
"plainly constitutional," but his shift has been enough to anger gun-control
advocates.
"I've gotten an avalanche of angry mail from apparent liberals who said, 'How
could you?'" Tribe says. "But as someone who takes the Constitution
seriously, I thought I had a responsibility to see what the Second Amendment
says, and how it fits."
Tribe's views on the Constitution are of more than passing importance.
Earlier editions of Tribe's treatise have been quoted more than 50 times in
Supreme Court opinions - by liberal and conservative justices - and by the
top courts of India, Germany, Russia and Canada, among others.
The new edition also deals with the law on impeachment developed from
President Clinton's trial, as well as the Supreme Court trend cutting back on
congressional power.
"He has an audience well beyond law students," says Drake University law
professor Tom Baker, who assigns Tribe's book to students. "For Larry Tribe
to say that there's more to the Second Amendment than originally thought is
very important, and reflects an open-mindedness that some don't expect."
Glenn Harlan Reynolds of the University of Tennessee adds: "He legitimizes
this whole new body of scholarship, and it will force judges and others to
face the issue on its merits."
At the usually conservative law school at Pepperdine University, professor
Douglas Kmiec recommends the book to "the very best students." On the Second
Amendment, Kmiec says, Tribe's book offers "a fair and evenhanded appraisal
of what is still an inconclusive right."
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Robert A. Hettinga <mailto: rah@ibuc.com>
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/>
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'
