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Robert J. Spitzer is an American political scientist, author, commentator, and gun control advocate.
Career
Spitzer is a distinguished service professor and chair of the political science department at the State University of New York (SUNY) at Cortland. He received his A.B. degree, summa cum laude, from SUNY Fredonia in 1975, his Master's degree from Cornell University in 1978, and his Ph.D. from Cornell University in 1980. He has taught at Cortland since 1979, and as a visiting professor at Cornell University since 1988. At Cortland, he has served as chair of the Political Science Department from 1983-1989, 2005-2006, and from 2008 to the present. He served as president of the Presidency Research Group of the American Political Science Association from 2001-2003 and as a member of the New York State Commission on the Bicentennial of the U.S. Constitution from 1986-1990. Spitzer is the author of fourteen books and over five-hundred articles, essays, papers, and op-eds on many topics related to American government. His areas of specialty include the American presidency, and gun politics.
Gun control advocacy
"...much of our gun culture has also been badly distorted by Hollywood and gun zealots."
"For all this, new gun measures will be tough going — as they historically have been — and success is by no means assured. But the time to act is now, and doing nothing is no longer an option."
-Robert Spitzer quotes
Since the 1980s, Spitzer has written books, spoken at public gatherings, written articles for newspapers, and appeared on countless radio and television shows in support of gun control, and has established himself as a passionate and robust supporter of gun control.
He has written pro-control articles for many newspapers including the Washington Post, the New York Daily News, and the Los Angeles Times. He has appeared on such radio outlets as NPR's Fresh Air With Terry Gross, and on television networks such as MSNBC.
Prior to and since the United States Supreme Court rulings in District of Columbia v. Heller(2008) and McDonald v. Chicago (2010), Spitzer also argues that history and prior law do not support the individualist interpretation of the Second Amendment reflected in these two recent court rulings. Writing since the two cases were handed down, he said that "the Heller and McDonald rulings have established as a matter of law an individual rights interpretation of the Second Amendment. But although judges can change the law, they cannot change history, and the historical record largely contradicts the bases for these two recent rulings."
Spitzer is the author of four books on gun control, including The Politics of Gun Control,, The Right to Bear Arms, Gun Control: A Documentary and Reference Guide, and coauthored the reference work Encyclopedia of Gun Control and Gun Rights, co-authored with Glenn H. Utter.
Published works
Spitzer has researched and written on many topics related to American politics and public policy, including the behavior of American institutions, national elections, the mass media, the Constitution, and New York State politics and policy. His first book, The Presidency and Public Policy, was a revised version of his doctoral dissertation. In it, he argues that presidential success in Congress was shaped by the type of policy proposed by presidents. His book The Presidential Veto is a wide-ranging examination of this under-appreciated presidential power, and it helped spark a new generation of research on the veto. His monograph The Right to Life Movement and Third Party Politics was a close examination of the New York-based Right to Life political party. His book Saving the Constitution from Lawyers: How Legal Education and Law Reviews Distort Constitutional Meaning, argues that legal training serves the practice of law well, but, according to the Harvard Law Review, "presents a sharp critique of the 'wayward constitutional theorizing' published in law journals." Pulitizer Prize winning historian Jack Rakove said of this book, "Nowhere is the gap between pretension and performance more evident than in the realm of constitutional law, and Robert Spitzer explains why." Since 1997, Spitzer has been series editor for the book series on American Constitutionalism published by SUNY Press.
His recent books include Saving the Constitution from Lawyers: How Legal Education and Law Reviews Distort Constitutional Meaning, and Gun Control: A Documentary and Reference Guide. Spitzer is the author of The Politics of Gun Control, a book that was first released in 1995 and is now in its fifth edition.
Partial bibliography
- The Presidency and Public Policy (1983)
- The Right to Life Movement and Third Party Politics (1987)
- The Presidential Veto (1988)
- The Bicentennial of the U.S. Constitution (1990)
- President and Congress (1993)
- Media and Public Policy (1993)
- The Politics of Gun Control (1995, 1998, 2004, 2008, 2012)
- Politics and Constitutionalism (2000)
- The Right to Bear Arms (2001)
- Essentials of American Politics (2002)
- The Presidency and the Constitution (2005)
- Saving the Constitution from Lawyers (2008)
- Gun Control: A Documentary and Reference Guide (2009)
- Encyclopedia of Gun Control and Gun Rights (with Glenn Utter) (2011)
- We the People: Essentials Edition (co-authored), 9th ed. (2013)
References
- ^ Spitzer, Robert J. (January 7, 2014). "New York's gun laws aren't so tough, historically speaking (Commentary)". Post-Standard. Syracuse, New York: Syracuse Media Group. Retrieved January 13, 2014.
- http://books.google.com/books?id=JQV3mMulSb4C&pg=PA7&lpg=PA7#v=onepage&q&f=false Shot in the Dark
- http://cornellsun.com/blog/2008/04/23/foreign-countries-divergent-in-strictness-of-gun-control/?ModPagespeed=noscript
- http://www2.cortland.edu/schools/arts-and-sciences/robert-j.-spitzer.dot
- http://lareviewofbooks.org/essay/righting-the-gun-debate
- http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/president-speed-article-1.1241395?pgno=1
- Spitzer, Robert; Kucinich, Jackie; McCarthy, Carolyn; Menino, Thomas; Kois, Dan (January 7, 2013). "An Update On Efforts To Prevent Gun Violence" (transcript) (Interview). Interviewed by Diane Rehm.
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- Spitzer, Robert J. (February 27, 2011). "Campuses Just Say 'No' to Guns". The Huffington Post.
- http://pjmedia.com/instapundit/?s=Chicago+Gun+Control
- http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/five-myths-about-gun-control/2012/12/21/6ffe0ae8-49fd-11e2-820e-17eefac2f939_story.html?hpid=z2
- http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/president-speed-article-1.1241395
- http://articles.latimes.com/2008/jan/08/opinion/oe-spitzer8
- http://www.npr.org/2011/01/27/133247508/the-history-and-growing-influence-of-the-nra?&f=13&sc=tw&cc=freshair
- http://www.nbcnews.com/id/3036677/vp/41050819#41050819
- Spitzer, Robert J. (October 11, 2013) . "Lost and Found: Researching the Second Amendment" (PDF). Chicago-Kent Law Review. 76 (1). Scholarly Commons. Retrieved January 10, 2014.
- https://lareviewofbooks.org/essay/righting-the-gun-debate LA Review of Books essay
- Robert J. Spitzer (September 2011). The Politics of Gun Control (5th ed.). Paradigm. Retrieved 2014-01-15.
- http://www.gvpt.umd.edu/lpbr/subpages/reviews/spitzerarms.htm
- Spitzer, Robert J. (March 20, 2009). Gun Control: A Documentary and Reference Guide. Greenwood. ISBN 978-0313345661.
- http://www.greyhouse.com/guncontrol.htm
- http://digitalcommons.lmu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1006&context=poli_fac
- https://library.villanova.edu/Find/Record/301812/Reviews
- http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=8748701
- http://www.gvpt.umd.edu/lpbr/reviews/2008/09/saving-constitution-from-lawyers-how.html
- http://harvardlawreview.org/media/pdf/recent_pubs0209.pdf
- http://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/law/law-general-interest/saving-constitution-lawyers-how-legal-training-and-law-reviews-distort-constitutional-meaning
- http://www.sunypress.edu/Searchadv.aspx?IsSubmit=true&CategoryID=6882&FIND.x=22&FIND.y=12
- Spitzer, Robert J. (April 7, 2008). Saving the Constitution from Lawyers: How Legal Training and Law Reviews Distort Constitutional Meaning. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521896967.
- Spitzer, Robert J. (March 20, 2009). Gun Control: A Documentary and Reference Guide. Greenwood. ISBN 978-0313345661.
- Spitzer, Robert J. (September 30, 2011). The Politics of Gun Control. Paradigm. ISBN 978-1594519871.
- "Faculty/Staff Detail: Robert Spitzer". cortland.edu. Retrieved January 13 2014.
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External links
- Faculty/Staff Detail: Robert Spitzer Biography at State University of New York (SUNY) Cortland