Faculty/Staff Detail

Robert Spitzer, Political Science Department, is co-author of an amicus curiae (friend of the court) brief submitted to the U.S. Supreme Court in the case of McDonald v. Chicago. The McDonald case is a constitutional challenge to Chicago's strict handgun law based on a Second Amendment right to bear arms claim that asserts that the Second Amendment should also apply to the states. As of now, the amendment applies only to the federal government. In the brief, Spitzer and co-authors argue that the right of states to regulate guns should fall outside of Second Amendment's protection as first established in the Supreme Court's 2008 ruling in D.C. v. Heller. The Supreme Court held oral argument in the McDonald case on March 2.