Whose Right to Bear Arms Did the Second Amendment Protect?

A collection of previously published historical papers gathered to present students with the main historical tendencies in the debate over the intended meaning of the Second Amendment of the Constitution. The articles explore whether the amendment (and, by extension, the Constitution as a whole) should be interpreted as a liberal individualist or republican communitarian document, whether the views of the Federalists and the Antifederalists should be given equal weight, and whether the Second Amendment confers a "right of revolution" against the United States. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

SAUL CORNELL is associate professor of history at the Ohio State University and is the author of Other Founders: Anti-Federalism and the Dissenting Tradition in America, 1788-1828 (1999), published by the Institute of Early American History and Culture. His articles have appeared in a variety of scholarly journals, including The Journal of American History, William and Mary Quarterly, Law and History Review, Constitutional Commentary, American Quarterly, and American Studies. Cornell has been an NEH fellow at the Institute of Early American History and Culture and held the Thomas Jefferson Chair in American Studies at Leiden University in the Netherlands as a Fulbright scholar.