In response to my post on the purposes behind the Fourteenth Amendment and the light they shed on the right to keep and bear arms, Deborah Pearlstein says she "need[s] some help understanding the evidentiary weight I should accord Senator Howard's remarks about the Fourteenth Amendment to our understanding of the meaning of Second." I'm happy to comply. Although what I have to say is formally in response to Deborah's questions, in fact Deborah is really giving me an excuse to say a little bit about the constitutional history of Reconstruction, America's second founding. I offer these remarks to all of my fellow progressive constitutional scholars.
continue reading at Balkinization . . .