http://www.usatoday.com/news/ndsthu08.htm
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."
=rod=
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."
=rod=