-----Original Message----- From: J. N. Heath [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Re: Robert Spitzer's article: Another eye-popping omission would be attributing a modern provenance to the individual right reading while overlooking the widely-known individual right endorsements of Coxe, Tucker, Rawle, Story, and Cooley.
Mr. Spitzer might have ignored those folks in his article, but his book, The Politics of Gun Control, cites them. After noting that Supreme Court and lower court decisions suggest a militia rather than individual right interpretation, and citing Burger, C.J., in his famous Parade law review article, he then goes on to a subsection on "The Textbook Bill of Rights" (pp. 42-43, 56): "Added confirmation of the courts' understanding is likewise found in most standard texts on the Bill of Rights. From classic analyses from the nineteenth century, like those of Joseph Story and Thomas Cooley,60 to modern treatments, the verdict is the same. In his classic book on the Bill of Rights, Irving Brant says: 'The Second Amendment, popularly misread, comes to life chiefly on parade floats of rifle associations and in the propaganda of mail-order houses selling pistols to teenage gangsters.'... "60. Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution (Durham, N.C.: Carolina Academic Press, 1987), 708; and Thomas M. Cooley, General Principles of Constitutional Law (Boston: Little, Brown, 1898), 298-99. Cooley did not include discussion of the important Presser case until the subsequent (fourth) edition of this book, published in 1931, when he buttressed the standard interpretation found in the writings of other constitutional scholars." PHB
