Abbey Speaker Series: Interpreting the Second Amendment
April 9 @ 5:30 pm - 7:00 pm
On April 9th, from 5:30 PM to 7:00 PM, the Abbey Speaker Series will host “Interpreting the Second Amendment” in the Frank Porter Graham Student Union Great Hall. UNC philosophy professor Matthew Kotzen will moderate a discussion between Joseph Blocher (Duke University) and Amy Swearer (The Heritage Foundation). Join us for pizza in the lobby afterward! Students who attend in person can earn CLE credit. No tickets are necessary; seating is first-come, first-served. We will reserve tickets for guests coming from outside Chapel Hill. Please email publicdiscourse@unc.edu to reserve seats.
Speaker Bios
Joseph Blocher is the Lanty L. Smith ’67 Distinguished Professor of Law at Duke Law School, where he co-directs the Center for Firearms Law and has received the Distinguished Teaching Award. His current scholarship addresses issues of gun rights and regulation, free speech, the law of the territories, and the relationship between law and violence. He has testified before congressional committees and written for The New York Times, Washington Post, Slate, Vox, and other public outlets.
Amy Swearer is a senior legal fellow in the Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at The Heritage Foundation, where her areas of focus include the Second Amendment, overcriminalization, school safety, and mental health policy. In this role, she runs The Heritage Foundation’s Defensive Gun Use Database and was a primary author of the recently published Heritage Foundation eBook, The Essential Second Amendment. She routinely testifies about gun policy before state and federal legislative bodies.
Matthew Kotzen (moderator) is a professor of philosophy at UNC and chair of the philosophy department. His research primarily focuses on issues in epistemology, the philosophy of science, and the law of evidence. He received his J.D. with High Honors from the University of North Carolina School of Law in 2021. He also has research interests in related areas of decision theory, philosophy of mind, and philosophy of language.