The Supreme Court is about to fill in (whether rightly or wrongly) one of the last blank spots on the constitutional map. This means law professors are about to lose one of the few areas where they can get their students to discuss an exciting constitutional rights issue by talking about text, structure, history, and more, with a minimum of distraction from What The Justices Have Told Us. Most Constitutional Law courses are overwhelmingly (and understandably, though not always entirely fortunately) about the Supreme Court Reports, not about the Constitution as a document. Until now, the Second Amendment has offered a great opportunity for a different approach.

In light of this, I thought I'd link to "The Second Amendment as Teaching Tool in Constitutional Law Classes," an article that I put together in 1998 -- it's a joint piece, with sections from Bob Cottrol, Sandy Levinson, Scot Powe, pre-InstaPundit Glenn Harlan Reynolds, and me. I hope it will be of interest even to non-conlawprofs, but I especially hope that some constitutional law professors take our advice in this coming semester.