One of the definitive statements ever written with regards to the second amendment was penned by Sanford Levinson, a Professor of law at the University of Texas Law School. A self admitted card carrying member of ACLU, Professor Levinson presents an argument based in historical reason, defining if you will, what the founders meant by the words “Militia,” and the “right to bear arms” and finally, the 2nd amendments place in society today.
I found it to be enlightening and find myself rereading the essay often.
The Article can be found here:
http://www.firearmsandliberty.com/embar.html
Sanford V Levinson
W. St. John Garwood and W. St. John Garwood, Jr. Centennial Chair
Professor of Government
JD 1973, Stanford
PhD 1969, Harvard
AB 1962, Duke University
Sanford Levinson, who holds the W. St. John Garwood and W. St. John Garwood, Jr. Centennial Chair in Law, joined the University of Texas Law School in 1980. Previously a member of the Department of Politics at Princeton University, he is also a Professor in the Department of Government at the University of Texas. The author of over 250 articles and book reviews in professional and popular journals, Levinson is also the author of four books: Constitutional Faith (1988, winner of the Scribes Award); Written in Stone: Public Monuments in Changing Societies (1998); Wrestling With Diversity (2003); and, most recently, Our Undemocratic Constitution: Where the Constitution Goes Wrong (and How We the People Can Correct It)(2006). His edited or co-edited books include a leading constitutional law casebook, Processes of Constitutional Decisionmaking (5th ed. 2006, with Paul Brest, Jack Balkin, Akhil Amar, and Reva Siegel); Reading Law and Literature: A Hermeneutic Reader (1988, with Steven Mallioux); Responding to Imperfection: The Theory and Practice of Constitutional Amendment (1995); Constitutional Stupidities, Constitutional Tragedies (1998, with William Eskridge); Legal Canons (2000, with Jack Balkin); The Louisiana Purchase and American Expansion (2005, with Batholomew Sparrow); and Torture: A Collection (2004, revised paperback edition, 2006), which includes reflections on the morality, law, and politics of torture from a variety of disciplinary perspectives. He has taught a course on "Torture, Law, and Lawyers" at the Harvard Law School. He is also a regular participant on the popular blog, Balkinization.
He has visited at the Boston University, Georgetown, Harvard, New York University, and Yale law schools, as well as the law faculties at the University of Paris II, Central European University in Budapest, and the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. He is also affiliated with the Shalom Hartman Institute of Jewish Philosophy in Jerusalem. A member of the American Law Institute, Levinson was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2001. He is married to Cynthia Y. Levinson, a writer of children's literature, and has two children, Meira, a member of the faculty at the Harvard Graduate School of Education (after teaching in the Atlanta and Boston public school systems), and Rachel, a lawyer with the American Association of University Professors in Washington, D.C.