Interpreting the Second Amendment

My first post will be on an interesting linguistic interpretation issue that is having national reprecussions here in the U.S. This post will be summarizing issues with the second amendment that were brought up by Prof. Baron et. al. See the references below for more information.

The second amendment to the U.S. Constitution states:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

A modern English user will find the phrasing of this amendment quite clunky; in particular it seems like the phrase before the second comma (“A well regulated .... State,”) and after the comma (“, the right of the people... “) are two independent phrases that are just jammed together. For ease of discussion, let L1 refer to the first part and L2 refer to the second part.

Clearly the framers of the constitution were not English neophytes, thus this is not merely an “error” -- so what does it mean? We can view this at the grammatical and semantic level. From the grammatical point of view, L1 and L2 are grammatical independent. The question that mainly concerns us is whether the two phrases are semantically interdependent -- does the meaning of L1 affect the meaning of L2? There are two cases:

1) Semantically independent: L1 has no bearing on L2, it is merely “constitutional throat clearing” [Baron]. From this interpretation, we find that the 2nd amendment says that everyone should have the right to own a gun.
2) Semantically dependent: L1 impacts L2 in a if-then or cause-effect relationship. From this interpretation, it can be argued that the 2nd amendment only meant for state militia to have arms, and not everyone to have arms.

Clearly this grammatical difference has great import on national law! How do we decide which of these interpretations is correct? One way to do this is to try to understand the English of the founders. Prof. Baron does a great job of this in this article (from which most of this material is drawn).

To summarize some of his argument, English textbooks at the time discussed what is called the “absolute construction”, in which two phrases are grammatically independent and placed in a sentence. In particular he says:

“ In addition, grammarians from the 18th century down to the present affirm that the absolute construction invariable establishes a semantic dependence in a sentence.” [Baron]

I refer the reader to the post by Prof. Baron for more in depth examples.

The opposing argument, from an amicus brief filed by the opposing side, argues that L1 is merely providing context, but is not the *only* reason for protecting gun ownership. A great example from the brief is a passage in Article 3 of the Northwest Ordinance (written about the same time as the amendments):

“Religion, morality, and knowledge, being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged.“

Does this mean that schools should only be used for teaching religion, morality and knowledge?

Clearly, resolving this problem is not something that can be done easily. In this particular case, the Supreme Court viewed L1 as basically “constitutional throat clearing” [Baron] which does not affect the “meat” of the amendment.


It seems clear that the unambiguous interpretation of laws is, if not impossible, highly improbable. Readers add their own interpretations and biases, and we must recognize that and provide a means for the continual reinterpretation of historical documents.

As a side note, I think this case argues for the political need for research in liberal arts and sciences. When we interpret legal documents it is not just the words we must understand, but rather the context in which they were written. Language is a powerful tool, yet it is inherently a convention -- meaning of words and phrases are agreed upon by the users of language; and thus language can, and does, change as society changes. In order to understand a legal document, one must also understand the writers and the society they lived in.

And finally, take a look at the post by Prof. Baron for a much more in depth look at this issue: The Web of Language