-Caveat Lector-
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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