The Second Amendment vs International Law

Conn Carroll / May 06, 2009

On March 23, President Obama nominated Harold Koh, former Dean of the Yale Law School, to be Legal Adviser at the U.S. Department of State. As Heritage U.S. Senate Relations Director Brian Darling writes in Human Events, “one of the many concerns [conservatives have] with Koh is his belief that international organizations should be empowered to regulate the Second Amendment right to own a firearm.”

Conservatives are concerned with the shift away from reliance on the Constitution as the final legal authority in the U.S. toward transnational jurisprudence favored by liberal activists. When Koh spoke at Fordham University School of Law in 2002, he advocated a U.N.-governed regime to require the U.S. “to submit information about their small arms production.” Koh believes that U.S. should “establish a national firearms control system and a register of manufacturers, traders, importers and exporters” of guns to comply with those international obligations. (more…)