Eric Ruben
Associate Professor of Law
Full-time faculty
| Phone |
214-768-2581 |
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Eric Ruben’s scholarly interests span criminal law, constitutional law, legal ethics, legal empirics, and legal history. His current scholarship explores the regulation of violence and weapons, and how that regulation intersects with self-defense and Second Amendment rights. Ruben teaches criminal law, professional responsibility, and a seminar on the Second Amendment.
Ruben’s work has been published or is forthcoming in the California Law Review, Duke Law Journal, Georgetown Law Journal, Harvard Law Review Forum, Minnesota Law Review, Southern California Law Review, Virginia Law Review Online, Yale Law Journal, and Yale Law Journal Forum, and has been cited by the Supreme Court of the United States, the United States Courts of Appeals, and in legal briefs. He has testified before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee and frequently provides legal commentary for popular outlets, including ABC News, MSNBC, CNN, New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Atlantic, Vox, Scotusblog, NPR, and CBS Radio.
Prior to joining SMU, Ruben was a fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice and an adjunct professor at New York University School of Law. Before that, he worked as a criminal defense attorney at Morvillo Abramowitz Grand Iason & Anello, P.C. and served as a law clerk for the Honorable Julio M. Fuentes of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.
Ruben received his J.D. from NYU School of Law, where he was an Articles Editor for the NYU Law Review, and his B.A. from Dartmouth College, where he graduated magna cum laude.
Area of expertise
- Criminal Law
- Criminal Procedure
- Legal Ethics
- Second Amendment
- Weapons Law
Education
B.A., Dartmouth College
J.D., NYU School of Law
Courses
Criminal Law
Professional Responsibility
Second Amendment
Articles
Scientific Context, Suicide Prevention, and the Second Amendment After Bruen, 108 Minnesota Law Review (2024)
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One Year Post-Bruen: An Empirical Assessment, 110 Virginia Law Review Online 20 (2024) (with Rosanna Smart and Ali Rowhani-Rahbar)
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Originalism-by-Analogy and Second Amendment Adjudication, 133 Yale Law Journal 99 (2023) (with Joseph Blocher)
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Self-Defense Exceptionalism and the Immunization of Private Violence, 96 Southern California Law Review 509 (2023)
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Public Carry and Criminal Law After Bruen, 135 Harvard Law Review Forum 505 (2022)
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“Second-Class” Rhetoric, Ideology, and Doctrinal Change, 110 Georgetown Law Journal 613 (2022) (with Joseph Blocher)
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Law of the Gun: Unrepresentative Cases and Distorted Doctrine, 107 Iowa Law Review 173 (2021)
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The Gun Rights Movement and “Arms” Under the Second Amendment, Brennan Center for Justice (2021)
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An Unstable Core: Self-Defense and the Second Amendment, 108 California Law Review 63 (2020)
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You Can Lead a Horse to Water: Heller and the Future of Second Amendment Scholarship, 68 Duke Law Journal Online 1 (2018) (with Joseph Blocher)
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From Theory to Doctrine: An Empirical Analysis of the Right to Keep and Bear Arms After Heller, 67 Duke Law Journal 1433 (2018) (with Joseph Blocher)
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Justifying Perceptions in First and Second Amendment Doctrine, 80 Law & Contemporary Problems 149 (2017)
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Preface: The Second Generation of Second Amendment Law & Policy, 80 Law & Contemporary Problems 2 (2017) (with Darrell A. H. Miller)
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Firearm Regionalism and Public Carry: Placing Southern Antebellum Case Law in Context, 125 Yale Law Journal Forum 121 (2015) (with Saul Cornell)
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Other publications
Protests, Insurrection, and the Second Amendment, Brennan Center for Justice (2021) (edited issue)
Second Generation of Second Amendment Law and Policy, 80 Law & Contemporary Problems 1-251 (2017) (with Darrell Miller) (edited issue)
Media
NPR, Interview, (October 2024)
AP News, quoted in (August 2024)
HuffPost, quoted in (June 2024)
Los Angeles Times, quoted in (June 2024)
Bloomberg Law, quoted in (June 2024)
San Francisco Chronicle, quoted in (June 2024)
Dallas Morning News, quoted in (June 2024)
New York Times, quoted in (March 2024)
AP News, quoted in (February 2024)
Bloomberg News, quoted in (February 2024)
New York Times, quoted in (November 2023)
The Economist, quoted in (April 2023)
ABC News, quoted in (January 2023)
New York Times, quoted in (October 2022)
NPR, quoted in (August 2022)
N.Y. Daily News, Op-Ed, (July 2022)
CNN, quoted in (July 2022)
New York Times, quoted in (June 2022)
USA Today, quoted in (February 2022)