In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

1 On the final day of its 2008 term, a sharply divided U.S. Supreme Court issued a five-to-four decision in District of Columbia v. Heller.1 The high court struck down the District of Columbia’s stringent gun control laws as a violation of the Second Amendment, reversing almost seventy years of settled precedent that linked the meaning of the “right of the people to keep and bear arms” with the preservation of a “well regulated militia.”2 Reinterpreting the meaning of the amendment as securing an individual right to own a gun in the home for the purpose of self-defense, the Court opened up a new chapter in the contentious history of gun rights and gun control. The Court’s decision had been eagerly anticipated, and from the outset the case had a dramatic quality. Heller was born from Parker v. District of Columbia, a case that began in 2003 with a lawsuit in which Dick Anthony Heller was one of six plaintiffs to challenge the District of Columbia’s gun laws (requiring all guns to be registered, but forbidding the registration of handguns ) on Second Amendment grounds.3 The District of Columbia appealed to precedent and sought to have the case dismissed because the Second Amendment protected only a collective right related to the militia. The plaintiffs then filed a motion for summary judgment. The National Rifle Association (NRA) Z Z Z Z Introduction The D.C. Gun Case Saul Cornell and Nathan Kozuskanich Z Z Z Z 2 introduction opposed pressing Parker as a test case and tried to have it joined with its own recently filed gun litigation, Seegars v. Ashcroft.4 The request was denied, and Heller’s lawyers, a group of libertarians connected to the Cato Institute and the Institute for Justice, pushed forward. The team emulated civil rights–era legal strategy by looking for sympathetic clients who would play well before the Court and in the public eye. Heller, a District of Columbia Special Police Officer who could not legally have a gun at home but who was able to carry a firearm at his job at the Thurgood Marshall Federal Judicial Center, provided them the vehicle to bring their historic challenge to the District’s law. In 2004 the district court ruled on Parker and found in favor of the defendants , but that decision was reversed on appeal in early 2007. The appellate court also ruled that Heller was the only plaintiff with standing, leaving him the lone respondent when the District of Columbia appealed the reversal to the Supreme Court. Internal political bickering within the District’s government led to the ouster of the lawyer who had drafted the government’s brief before the oral argument.5 In another surprise development, the progun George W. Bush administration filed a brief in support of the District of Columbia, asking that the case be remanded back to the district court so that it could apply the appropriate level of judicial scrutiny. In essence, the solicitor general conceded that the Second Amendment was an individual right, but urged the Supreme Court to apply a more deferential standard of review than strict scrutiny, the most demanding standard for evaluating the constitutionality of a statute.6 Laws subjected to the strict scrutiny test must be narrowly tailored and serve a compelling state interest. The Bush administration’s brief would be the first of many ironies in the Heller case. A wide assortment of politicians, academics, lawyers, and activists on both sides of the issue filed sixty-six amicus briefs and flooded the Court with over two thousand pages of reading. In addition to longtime combatants in the great gun debate like the NRA and the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, smaller organizations such as Jews for the Preservation of Firearms and the gay/gun rights group the Pink Pistols also filed briefs. They were joined by contributions from professional linguists, historians, criminologists, medical doctors, lawyers, politicians, police and military personnel, and a variety of special interest groups. The scene outside the Court building on the day of the oral argument looked more like a rock concert than a typical day at the highest court in the land, with hundreds camping out in front of the Court to get a seat to watch the drama unfold.7 The central issue in Heller, the meaning of the Second Amendment, had not come before the Court since 1939, when [3.16.81.94] Project...

Share