Issue 4 Symposium
The Notre Dame Law Review and the Duke Center for Firearms will host a symposium on History, Tradition, and Analogical Reasoning on Friday, November 3rd, 2023 at the Notre Dame Law School. Contributors will discuss how the particular brand of historical-analogical reasoning set forth by the Supreme Court in its June 2022 decision in NYSRPA v. Bruen works in practice, and how it fits within the broader use of analogical reasoning as a mode of legal argument and decision.
The Bruen majority emphasizes that the constitutionality of gun regulations will now turn on whether a given law “is consistent with this Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation” and that determining consistency with history “will often involve reasoning by analogy.” Indeed, analogical reasoning is the core of Bruen’s approach, yet the opinion treats historical-analogical reasoning as a self-explanatory concept requiring little guidance. This symposium seeks to explore the particular challenges of reasoning by analogy to history and drawing out lessons from existing scholarship on analogical reasoning to guide the development of Second Amendment doctrine post-Bruen.
Contributors are as follows:
- William Baude, Harry Kalven, Jr. Professor of Law, University of Chicago Law School
- Brandon Beck, Assistant Professor of Law, Texas Tech School of Law
- Marc DeGirolami, Cary Fields Professor of Law, St. John’s University School of Law
- Alexandra Filindra, Associate Professor of Political Science & Psychology, University of Illinois Chicago
- Robert Leider, Assistant Professor of Law, Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University
- Jason Medinger, Assistant U.S. Attorney, Chief, Appellate Division for the District of Maryland
- Darrell Miller, Melvin G. Shimm Distinguished Professor of Law, Duke University School of Law
- Christina Mulligan, Professor of Law, Brooklyn Law School
- Kunal Parker, Professor of Law, University of Miami School of Law
- Kelly Roskam, Director of Law & Policy, Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions
- Fred Schauer, David & Mary Harrison Distinguished Professor of Law, University of Virginia School of Law
- Barbara Spellman, Professor of Law, University of Virginia School of Law
- Ryan Williams, Associate Professor, Boston College Law School
- Andrew Willinger, Executive Director, Center for Firearms Law, Duke University School of Law