The moment everyone was waiting for has arrived: The article Josh Blackman and I wrote, “Keeping Pandora’s Box Sealed: Privileges or Immunities, The Constitution in 2020, and Properly Extending the Right to Keep and Bear Arms to the States,” has officially come out in the Georgetown Journal of Law & Public Policy. (I previously blogged about this article here, among other places, and here’s a recent reference on Reason’s blog.) The journal thought enough of our work to publish it on page 1 of issue 1 of this year’s volume.


We’re also grateful to the journal editors for expediting the editing and publication process generally so that the article would come out in time for the McDonald v. Chicago argument. Indeed, that strategy is already paying off, with “Keeping Pandora’s Box Sealed” having been cited in the petitioners’ reply brief — not to mention Cato’s amicus brief. The Georgetown JLPP has been cited in Supreme Court opinions the past two terms, so we’re cautiously optimistic about our chance to continue this trend.


In addition to reading the article (also available on SSRN), you can also attend various presentations I’m giving in the next two weeks about McDonald v. Chicago and properly extending the right to keep and bear arms to the states:

  • Feb. 23 at lunch — University of New Mexico Law School (sponsored by the Federalist Society) — “McDonald v. City of Chicago and Properly Extending the Right to Keep and Bear Arms”
  • Feb. 25 at 1:30pm EST/10:30 PST — ABA Continuing Legal Education Teleconference — “Beyond Gun Control: McDonald v. City of Chicago and Incorporation of Bill of Rights” (registration fee, 1.5 hours of CLE credit)
  • Mar. 1 at 4pm — Cato Institute Policy Forum — “McDonald v. Chicago: Will the Right to Keep and Bear Arms Apply to the States?”
  • [Mar. 2 at 10am — Supreme Court argument in McDonald - I will be giving a statement to the media scrum on the marble steps afterward]
  • Mar. 2 at 3:30pm — Georgetown University Law School — Post-Argument Discussion of McDonald and “Keeping Pandora’s Box Sealed” (sponsored by the GJLPP and the Federalist Society)
  • Mar. 3 at 12pm — Cato Institute Hill Briefing in B‑340 Rayburn House Office Building — “McDonald v. Chicago: The Fourteenth Amendment and the Future of Gun Rights”

You can also listen here to a half-hour podcast about “Keeping Pandora’s Box Sealed” that I recently recorded with the Independence Institute’s David Kopel (also a Cato associate policy analyst).