Volume I of Cunningham’s 1771 second edition, including the complete Armour or Arms entry cited in Heller.
A New and Complete Law-Dictionary
Timothy Cunningham · Volume 1 · 2d ed. · 1771
1 Timothy Cunningham, A New and Complete Law-Dictionary (London, W. Flexney, G. Kearsly, J. & F. Rivington, T. Longman, & Robinson & Roberts 2d ed. 1771)
Internet Archive, Books in Microfilm / The Eighteenth Century; microfilmed copy bearing a Museum Britannicum stamp. All 899 repository access-format scan records are present in the PDF. Sampled title, entry, context, interior, and terminal pages were checked. The visually checked title page identifies volume I of the second edition, corrected, printed in London in 1771. This matches the year and volume cited by Heller; it does not establish the particular physical copy consulted by the Court. The volume is unpaginated. Cite the headword Armour or Arms with s.v.; PDF page 189 is navigation only, and no printed-page numbers are assigned. The full entry includes both the definitional wording and the servants-and-labourers example quoted by Heller, together with additional legal and heraldic context. The underlying statutes and earlier authorities summarized in the entry have not been independently verified in this batch. The unchanged repository PDF is approximately 1.64 GB. Its black-and-white microfilm images retain edge shadows, skew, annotations, and original library stamps. OCR is imperfect; page images control quotations. Only volume I, covering A–E, was acquired. Volume II is separately available but remains outside this acquisition. The original physical book has not received a quire-by-quire completeness audit.
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Use in constitutional interpretation
Antonin Scalia · Opinion of the Court
District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570, 581, 587–88 (2008).
Scalia uses Cunningham’s definition to establish the historical breadth of arms, then cites its servants-and-labourers example to show nonmilitary usage. Heller returns to that example at 587–88. The complete entry also discusses heraldic arms, possession duties, and restrictions on armed attendance, riding, weapons, exports, and imports. Those surrounding materials are retained as context; the dictionary’s definition does not by itself resolve the constitutional argument.
Read entry Armour or Arms →
The visually checked title page identifies volume I of the second edition, corrected, printed in London in 1771. This matches the year and volume cited by Heller; it does not establish the particular physical copy consulted by the Court.
The volume is unpaginated. Cite the headword Armour or Arms with s.v.; PDF page 189 is navigation only, and no printed-page numbers are assigned.
The full entry includes both the definitional wording and the servants-and-labourers example quoted by Heller, together with additional legal and heraldic context. The underlying statutes and earlier authorities summarized in the entry have not been independently verified in this batch.
The unchanged repository PDF is approximately 1.64 GB. Its black-and-white microfilm images retain edge shadows, skew, annotations, and original library stamps. OCR is imperfect; page images control quotations.
Only volume I, covering A–E, was acquired. Volume II is separately available but remains outside this acquisition. The original physical book has not received a quire-by-quire completeness audit.
Scalia uses Cunningham’s definition to establish the historical breadth of arms, then cites its servants-and-labourers example to show nonmilitary usage. Heller returns to that example at 587–88. The complete entry also discusses heraldic arms, possession duties, and restrictions on armed attendance, riding, weapons, exports, and imports. Those surrounding materials are retained as context; the dictionary’s definition does not by itself resolve the constitutional argument.
