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Abstract:
On Tuesday November 20th, 2007 the United States Supreme Court granted certiorari in a case involving the District of Columbia's ban on handguns. The statute had been successfully challenged in the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit on the grounds that it violated the Second Amendment's guarantee of "the right of the people to keep and bear arms." With its decision to grant certiorari, the Supreme Court entered a constitutional controversy from which it had been largely absent for nearly seventy years, the meaning and scope of the Second Amendment. That controversy, the debate over the Second Amendment has occupied a somewhat curious place in American constitutional discourse. It is the subject of a vast polemical literature in the popular press, part of the often strident debate over gun control. Where once the amendment suffered from an unfortunate scholarly neglect, it has over the last two decades, become an arena of lively and sometimes acrimonious debate among historians, legal scholars and political scientists. The Court's decision is likely to provide a definitive legal ruling on the amendment although it is unlikely to end the controversy over the amendment's original meaning and how it should be applied in modern America.

Second Amendment, right to bear arms, militia

Abstract:
This essay examines recent works on the history and culture of Afro-Argentines. It discusses why the study of Afro-Argentines has traditionally been an underexamined topic by scholars specializing in Argentina and why there has been a recent renewal of interest in the topic. Essay explores influence of Africans and Afro-Argentines on Argentine culture and the question of the so-called disappearance of the Afro-Argentines.

Argentina, race relations, Afro-Argentines, cultural history

Abstract:
This essay is a contribution to the discussion of the conflict that often exists between legal norms and legal practice in Latin America. It examines the conflict between equality under the law as a legal and constitutional norm in Latin America and the persistence of strong inequality as a social reality in Latin America. The essay examines this tension through a look at recent Latin American legal historiography. Essays include issues of race, class and the law in the nineteenth century Brazilian Empire, race and the law in early 20th century Cuba and Brazilian labor law in the middle and latter part of the 20th century.

Legal History, Latin America, race, labor Afro-Cubans, Afro-Brazilians, slavery, abolition

Abstract:
This article examines the impact of the social science literature on the death penalty and deterrence on court decisions in capital punishment cases. The article examines two highly influential statistical studies, one done by sociologist Thorsten Sellin in 1959 and the other by economist Isaac Ehrlich in 1975 and uses both studies to illustrate the kinds of questions the courts can and should ask of quantitative studies in this area.

Abstract:
This article examines the impact of the social science literature on the death penalty and deterrence on court decisions in capital punishment cases. The article examines two highly influential statistical studies, one done by sociologist Thorsten Sellin in 1959 and the other by economist Isaac Ehrlich in 1975 and uses both studies to illustrate the kinds of questions the courts can and should ask of quantitative studies in this area.

Abstract:
Basic con law classes are meant to teach students some fundamental legal skills: Considering contentious moral questions from all sides, even those sides for which one has a visceral revulsion. Using the various modalities of interpretive argument -- interpretation focused on text, original meaning, the interplay of political structures, changed circumstances, precedent, and the implications of "fundamental," though unwritten, values within the American ethos. Thinking about how law can check power. Arguing articulately about the clash between solemn constitutional guarantees and eminently worthy countervailing government interests.

The Second Amendment turns out to be a surprisingly useful tool for all these purposes:

1. Second Amendment arguments tend to run counter to traditional political divides, and can thus help teach students to make arguments that they'd normally oppose.

2. The Amendment, unburdened as it is with much Supreme Court baggage, is a particularly good tool for discussing the entire range of interpretive modalities.

3. The Second Amendment was seen by the Framers as a basic part (perhaps the most basic part) of the checks and balances on federal government power.

4. The Amendment particularly starkly presents the clash between textually secured constitutional rights and eminently legitimate government interests is rarely presented more starkly than in the Second Amendment.

5. The Amendment can enrich our understanding of other provisions, such as the Free Speech Clause and the criminal justice provisions.

6. Finally, the Amendment can remind students that constitutional protections needn't be all good: that the Constitution can sometimes be the subject of criticism and not just veneration.

Our goal here is not to demonstrate the True Meaning of the Second Amendment. Rather, it's to show how the debates about the Amendment's possible meanings can enliven and improve the con law class.