Standing Our Legal Ground: Reclaiming the Duties Within Second Amendment Rights Cases
Christopher N.J. Roberts. The Supreme Court is likely to hear another contentious Second Amendment gun case in the near future. This Article argues that focusing exclusively on rights—the dominant mode of legal analysis in such cases—is, ironically, not the appropriate foundational starting point. By pitting competing personal interests and incompatible rights claims against one another, this legal issue is likely to devolve into a dispute over politics and ideologies rather than law. If we are to prevent the next Second Amendment Supreme Court case from drifting away from its legal moorings into another ideological contest, this Article suggests that the appropriate starting point begins with recognition of one of the most basic, yet widely overlooked legal propositions: For every right there is a correlative duty. Interestingly, although every legal right…