The Second Amendment guarantees the right to keep and bear “Arms”–not solely “firearms.” While firearms have always been the paradigmatic Second Amendment arm, there are many other types of arms which are protected by the Second Amendment. By far the most common of the other arms are knives. Now at the printer is the first […]
Archive | History
Arthur Schlesinger and the Kennedy Assassination
The events of November 1963 and their aftermath are described in Chapter 9 of my undergraduate thesis The Highbrow in American Politics: Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. and the Role of the Intellectual in Politics. In brief: Schlesinger, John Kenneth Galbraith, and most of the rest of the White House immediately leaped to the conclusion that “the radical […]
Gordon Wood on The Supreme Court’s Uses of History (“A Necessary Fiction” that “Has Its Own Integrity”)
Professors Scott Gerber and Gordon Wood recently had a discussion on “The Supreme Court’s Uses of History,” at Ohio Northern University, a transcript of which is available online. Professional historians tend to be quite skeptical of originalism, so I was intrigued to see that Gordon Wood’s remarks, while mixed, were much more accommodating than I […]
Ancient Hebrew Militia Law
That’s the title of a short article by me, just published in the Denver University Law Review Online. The militia politics of ancient Israel are covered in an article I wrote several years ago for Liberty magazine: ” To Your Tents, O Israel!” Both articles discuss the influence of the Israel’s history on the American Founders.
Libertarianism, the Confederacy, and the Civil War Revisited
By Ilya Somin on July 16, 2013 8:34 pm in Civil War, History, Libertarianism, Racial Discrimination, Secession
Revelations that Rand Paul aide Jack Hunter has a history of racist and pro-Confederate statements during his days as a radio shock jock have rekindled the longstanding debate over libertarian attitudes towards the Civil War. Hunter has repudiated many of his former statements and attitudes. But that hasn’t stopped the controversy from continuing. This uproar […]
Frederick Douglass on How We Should Remember the Civil War
On Civil War anniversaries, like today’s 150th anniversary of the end of the Battle of Gettysburg, it has become traditional to commemorate both sides equally. There is some logic to this practice. We do not want to unnecessarily perpetuate sectional grievances, or be seen as somehow blaming today’s white southerners for the wrongs of earlier […]
Ice-T, Volokh, and Kopel: Together at last in a feature film
By David Kopel on June 23, 2013 3:12 pm in Constitutional History, Constitutional Law, Guns, History, McDonald v. City of Chicago, Popular Culture, Registration, Self-Defense, Terrorism
The film is Assaulted: Civil Rights under Fire. It opened Friday in a limited theatrical release. Assaulted tells the modern and historic story of the Second Amendment, with a particular focus on civil rights. The events include Reconstruction, the Deacons for Defense, the Battle of Athens, the post-Katrina gun confiscations, and much more. The narrator is Ice-T. […]
Emmy award nomination–1912 Time Machine
For the sixth year in a row, Colorado Inside-Out’s annual Time Machine episode has been nominated for a Heartland Regional Emmy. (We’ve won three.) The category”Interview/Discussion – Program/Special.” In this episode (originally broadcast in July 2012), the Colorado Inside-Out political discussion program travels back to 1912. Former Rocky Mountain News reporter Kevin Flynn turns in […]
My Review Fear Itself by Ira Katznelson
has been published at Reason.com. It’s not a favorable review–I argue that Katznelson grossly exaggerates the extent to which FDR was stymied from pursuing a progressive agenda by the power of southern Congressmen, and that he is unpersuasive in excusing some of Roosevelt’s worst policies on the grounds that the alternative was to put democracy […]
Walter Hines Page bleg
What is the best source detailing the activities of Walter Hines Page (President Wilson’s Ambassador to the Court of St. James) in advising the British government about how to conduct propaganda operations in the United States, prior to U.S. entry into World War I? How about for the general American view (during the 1920s) that […]
Let’s Play Spot the Fallacies
From a review in the most recent issue of Reviews in American History: Like most conservatives, Shlaes assumes a perfectly competitive marketplace in which the government can only make an unwarranted and counterproductive intrusion. This perspective leads Shlaes to discount the role of jobs programs such as the CCC and the WPA that contributed to […]
MSNBC’s Harris-Perry on my gun research: “The minutia of . . . replicating data turned into a politically consequential battle that shifted the discourse on guns in America”
On MSNBC over the weekend, Melissa Harris-Perry had some very kind words to say about some of my research a decade ago on guns in early America and the errors of Michael Bellesiles’s Arming America: MSNBC: Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy After a half-minute set-up, Harris-Perry discusses my […]
U.S. Complicity in Katyn Cover-Up
Newly declassified documents reveal that the U.S. government concealed evidence that the Soviet Union was responsible for the Katyn forest massacre of several thousand Polish POWs. In all, over 20,000 Poles were killed in mass executions. The USSR had consistently denied responsibility for the killings until 1990. The newly released documents show U.S. officials were […]
“If you want this robe, you’ll have to pry it from my cold, dead hands”: Justices Retiring Later, Often Waiting for a Change in Presidents
As people discuss whether Justice Roberts avoided politics by siding with the left side of the Court or instead yielded to political pressure to change his vote, I want to point to an article that I posted on SSRN a couple of days ago. It shows that Supreme Court justices do tend to act politically […]
Justices Time Their Retirements According to Political Party
Do U.S. Supreme Court justices tend to try to time their retirements to help the political party of the president who appointed them? University of Chicago sociologist Rafe Stolzenberg and I have an article in the journal Demography that finally answers that question: Yes, justices do act politically when deciding whether to retire or take […]