This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Monday, December 28, 2009. I'm Caleb Brown.

Two years ago the Supreme Court gave renewed life to the Second Amendment, affirming the individual right

to keep and bear arms in the Heller decision. In March, a case picking up where Heller left

off may revive the long-dormant privileges or immunities clause of the 14th Amendment.

Iilia Shapiro, senior fellow in constitutional studies at the Cato War, the Reconstruction Congress wanted to prevent state tyranny.

Slavery was the obvious example of that, and that's what the 13th Amendment

eradicated, but there was still all sorts of oppressive laws passed at the state level, which until the 14th Amendment the

Constitution was silent about, that is the federal judiciary or any other federal law

enforcement official couldn't do anything about. So the framers of the

14th Amendment which of course has three clauses due process process, equal protection,

and privileges of immunities,

tried to make sure that people's liberties

were preserved wherever they lived in this country

and empowered the judiciary, the federal judiciary, to strike down even

state laws that violated due process considerations, you know, if you didn't get a fair trial and things like this, or

equal protection if the laws applied to native Tennesseians differently than to

Kentuckyans who happen to find themselves in Tennessee. Well that

wasn't any good in their judgment. And this most interesting point is the

privileges or immunities clause. We haven't heard that

much about it because in 1873 in the Slaughterhouse cases dealing with the regulation of

Slaughterhouses in Louisiana, the Supreme Court, which was still a conservative

institution, didn't like this kind of radical change that the 14th Amendment framers

...