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Lecture at St. John’s College Explores Second Amendment Controversy
FOR RELEASE: August 26, 2009
CONTACT: Patricia Dempsey, 410-626-2539
Patricia.Dempsey@sjca.edu
Roderick Hills, a professor at New York University School of Law, will deliver the Constitution Day lecture at St. John’s College, entitled “Alcohol, Guns, and Federalism: Two Case Studies on the Dangers of the Judiciary's Nationalizing the Culture Wars.” Hills’ lecture will be held in the Francis Scott Key Auditorium on Friday, September 11, at 8:15 p.m. The lecture is free and open to the public.
In his lecture, Hills says he will compare the Court's late 19th-century effort to ban state regulation of interstate commerce in alcoholic beverages and the ongoing judicial controversy over whether the Second Amendment ought to apply to state and local laws regulating the use and possession of firearms. “I will suggest that the failure of the former bodes ill for the incorporation of the Second Amendment through the Fourteenth Amendment against the states,” says Hills. “More generally, I will discuss whether and to what extent national liberties ought to be tempered by recognition of cultural diversity in a federal system.”
Hills graduated from Yale Law School with a Juris Doctor degree. He has been a professor at New York University School of Law since 2006.