Second Amendment

Rahimi’s Natural Law Moment – Part 2

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In Part One of this essay, I argued that the Supreme Court’s opinion in United States v. Rahimi set the stage for lawyers and judges to incorporate natural law principles into their reasoning. In Rahimi, the Court appealed to the “principles underlying the Second Amendment” in order to ascertain the scope of its protections. Our

Rahimi’s Natural Law Moment – Part 1

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Following the 2008 decision in District of Columbia v. Heller, Hadley Arkes wrote that Justice Scalia’s putatively originalist opinion might have appealed to “something resembling—brace yourself—‘natural law.’” After all, Scalia’s look into the text and history of the Second Amendment revealed that it codified a right that preexisted the Constitution. Arkes queried, “Was he suggesting

Anchoring Truths
Anchoring Truths is a James Wilson Institute project
The James Wilson Institute’s Mission is to restore to a new generation of lawyers, judges, and citizens the understanding of the American Founders about the first principles of our law and the moral grounds of their own rights.
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