Second Amendment Realism

13 Pages Posted: 26 Aug 2014 Last revised: 10 Nov 2014

See all articles by David Wolitz

David Wolitz

University of the District of Columbia David A. Clarke School of Law

Date Written: October 1, 2014

Abstract

Glenn Reynolds has written that the “Second Amendment is now ordinary constitutional law.” I agree with that statement, and in this Symposium piece, I argue that the development of Second Amendment jurisprudence and Second Amendment scholarship will now suffer all of the defects that come along with the practice of ordinary constitutional law — including significant and irreducible doctrinal indeterminacy, results-driven reasoning by judges and academics, judicial self-aggrandizement, centralization of decision-making in Washington, DC, and increasing left-right socio-political polarization. All of these factors tend toward a decrease in the legitimacy and prestige of the Supreme Court and a decrease in the legitimacy and prestige of constitutional law as an academic endeavor.

Keywords: Second Amendment, Constitutional interpretation, realism, spam jurisprudence, legal academia, indeterminacy

Suggested Citation

Wolitz, David, Second Amendment Realism (October 1, 2014). Tennessee Law Review, Vol. 81, p. 539, 2014, University of Tennessee Legal Studies Research Paper No. 257, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2487228

David Wolitz (Contact Author)

University of the District of Columbia David A. Clarke School of Law ( email )

4200 Connecticut Ave. NW
Washington, DC 20003
United States

Do you have a job opening that you would like to promote on SSRN?

Paper statistics

Downloads
234
Abstract Views
1,021
Rank
201,714
PlumX Metrics