Justice Don Willett wrote an op-ed piece on Wednesday that was published by the Austin American-Statesman online. The occasion was Constitution Day, and Justice Willett wrote about the recent Heller decision about the Second Amendment and — of potentially much broader significance to practitioners — his role advising ConSource.
ConSource is an online resource that bills itself as “the free online resource of the Founders’ constitutional documents” From the few minutes that I have spent poking around on the site, it’s pretty impressive. I’ve spent enough weekends poring through the Federalist Papers and convention notes in book form to see that this could be very helpful. If you want to pitch an original intent argument, this could be a very valuable resource for you.
If you’re doing similar research on the Texas Constitution, you may want to check out the Debates in the Texas Constitutional Convention of 1875, which covers the framing of the current Texas Constitution (ratified in 1876). It’s not as lovingly annotated as its federal equivalents, but it does shed at least a little light on some of the more mysterious parts of our constitution.
1 response so far ↓
1 Kristofer Monson // Sep 19, 2008 at 5:08 pm
Apart from the online version of the Constitutional debates, the (now out of print) Braden commentaries on the Texas constitution are very useful. You can find a pdf copy of Braden at the state law library’s website, http://www.sll.state.tx.us, in the “Texas law” section.