On Thursday, March 21, 2024, at 7 p.m. the Ruth Pauley Lecture Series will present the fourth in its 36th consecutive season of free lectures from renowned thinkers, statesmen, and arts and entertainment figures. This lecture will feature Joseph Blocher on the topic “America and the Right to Possess Firearms: The Past, Present and Future of the Second Amendment.”
Joseph Blocher is the Lanty L. Smith ’67 Distinguished Professor of Law at Duke Law School where he is also Senior Associate Dean for Faculty. His principal academic interests include federal and state constitutional law, the First and Second Amendments to the U.S. Constitution, legal history, and property. His current scholarship addresses issues of gun rights and regulation, free speech, the law of the territories, and the relationship between law and violence.
Following a distinguished academic career, both here and abroad, judicial clerkships, and practice in a large private firm, Professor Blocher returned to his hometown of Durham to join the Duke Law faculty in 2009. He received the law school’s Distinguished Teaching Award in 2012. He has testified about firearms law before House and Senate committees and has written for numerous academic journals as well as the New York Times, Washington Post, Slate, Vox, and other public outlets. Videos featuring Professor Blocher are available on YouTube, and he is often heard on NPR. In 2018 he co-founded the Center for Firearms Law, which is a leading academic institute and repository dedicated to legal scholarship about gun rights and regulation in the United States.
Prof. Blocher’s lecture will provide an overview of the past, present, and possible future of the Second Amendment and the right to keep and bear arms. That right was transformed by the Supreme Court’s decision in District of Columbia v. Heller – a case in which Prof. Blocher played a part as a young lawyer helping to represent the District. It has undergone further transformation in the years since, including in 2022’s NYSRPA v. Bruen, and, potentially, in the recently argued and pending case, United States v. Rahimi. Prof. Blocher will not only explain the text, history, and development of the right to keep and bear arms, but will also attempt to dispel some common misconceptions about it.
Advance registration is now required for Ruth Pauley Lectures. Get free tickets (no tax/no charge) by scanning the QR code on lecture posters, by visiting www.ruthpauley.org, or by using the following link: www/ticketmesandhills/organizations/ruth-pauley-lecture-series
The lecture will begin at 7:00pm in Owens Auditorium at the Bradshaw Performing Arts Center on the Sandhills Community College campus. The lecture will be preceded with a cash bar in the auditorium lobby, and will be followed by a Q&A session and then an informal gathering with the speaker and refreshments in the lobby.
All Ruth Pauley lectures are free and open to the public.
For more information, visit www.ruthpauley.org
02/22/24 1:00 pm
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