Legal scholarship on the Second Amendment
Last updated: November 23, 2002
The Second Amendment Law Library originally created by Mark Fuller and Steve West, formerly at www.2ndlawlib.org, has unfortunately closed. The Library's Law Reviews and Court Decisions sections are maintained here.
Featuring law journal articles on the Second Amendment. (Click on the above "Law Reviews" section header.)
State, federal and Supreme Court decisions on the right to arms.
Additional Second Amendment Law Review Articles - from the Second Amendment Foundation.
Documents on the First Congress Debate on Arms and Militia - a compilation of all the debates and all of the changes made in Congress concerning the creation of the Second Amendment. (It is relatively short because there is not much recorded debate. However, the debate that there is and the changes they made in the language are instructive.)
THE DEBATES IN THE SEVERAL STATE CONVENTIONS - These debates on ratification occurred prior to the creation of the Bill of Rights. The debates concerned the relative defects that were perceived in the Constitution. It is from these debates that the concept for a Bill of Rights and the Second Amendment were born. This debate continued in a series of articles writen by persons supportive of the Constitution -- called "Federalists" and authored by James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and John Jay (The Federalist Papers) -- and a series of articles written by persons opposed to the Constitution -- called Anti-Federalists and written in part by Patrick Henry, Richard Henry Lee, and Melancton Smith (The Anti-Federalist Papers [see also this Anti-Federalist page]).