Sunday, February 15, 2009

Lberal think tank supports Second Amendment incorporation

From Reason Magazine:
As Brian Doherty noted earlier, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals has held that the 2nd Amendment does not apply against state and local governments. In more positive gun rights news, the Constitutional Accountability Center, a liberal law firm and think tank "dedicated to fulfilling the progressive promise of our Constitution's text and history," filed a friend of the court brief last week on behalf of the plaintiffs in McDonald v. City of Chicago, arguing that the 14th Amendment's Privileges or Immunities Clause does make the 2nd Amendment applicable against the states (Alan Gura, the lawyer who argued D.C. v. Heller before the Supreme Court, is representing the plaintiffs in McDonald). Among the authors of the CAC's brief is legal scholar Michael Kent Curtis, one of the foremost experts on the history and meaning of the 14th Amendment. Curtis was also the lead author of the friend of the court brief filed last fall in Nordyke v. King, which also argued that the 2nd Amendment applies to the states via the 14th.

Article here. Good to see at least a few honest liberal thinkers support application of the Second Amendment to the states via the Fourteenth Amendment, just as they support the incorporation of, e.g., the First, Fourth, and Fifth Amendments. No principled reason exists to deny having the Second Amendment similarly apply against the states like those other individual rights.

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