Quote:When the constitutional accountability Center launched in 2008, it looked like just another liberal legal-advocacy group, dedicated to "fulfilling the progressive promise of our Constitution's text and history." The causes it has backed run the standard liberal gamut: among other things, the group supports California's efforts to regulate carbon emissions and pushes for "robust due-process protections for immigrant criminal defendants." So if you were told that the CAC had filed an amicus brief in McDonald v. Chicago, a case about gun control to be argued before the Supreme Court this week, you might think it was siding with Chicago, whose restrictions on gun ownership are being challenged.

You would be wrong. For decades, liberals have opposed gun rights on the grounds that the Second Amendment is limited to the establishment of state militias. But some liberal dissenters from this view now say that is too narrow a reading of the Constitution. They contend that it fails to take into account the historical record and contradicts liberals' own reading of the Constitution's protection of individual rights.

The CAC has joined forces with staunch conservatives, including Steven G. Calabresi, cofounder of the Federalist Society, to support expanding individual rights, including gun rights, in the states—inviting the possibility that Chicago's virtual ban on handguns might be overturned. "There is a deeply progressive historical basis for some individual right to bear arms," says Douglas Kendall, the CAC's founder.

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At the heart of the left-leaning dissenters' argument is a plea for consistency. For decades, liberals have insisted that the Constitution assumes—even if it does not explicitly spell out—a right to bodily autonomy. This right, long disputed by conservatives, is a basis for arguments in favor of abortion rights and gay rights. Liberals who support gun rights find a similar implied right to own weapons: after all, they say, what is the right to bear arms but the ability to protect your body from criminals as well as the government? "The right to bear arms gives you a mechanism to protect your bodily autonomy from attack," says Winkler.