Big law has turned out in force in more than 80 friend-of-the-court briefs submitted in the U.S. Supreme Court's major gun rights case in the new term.

In the case, New York Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, the justices have been asked to decide if New York's requirement for a concealed carry license violates the Second Amendment.

The 82 amicus briefs in the case—45 supporting the rifle and pistol association; 37 supporting New York—are not a record number, but they fit comfortably within the totals being filed in hot-button cases in at least the last decade or so. And yet, the number pales next to the 136 amicus briefs filed in the term's abortion challenge to be argued Dec. 1. The 2014-15 term broke a record for the most briefs filed in a single case—147 amicus briefs in the marriage equality case, Obergefell v. Hodges.

"Double- and even triple-digit amicus briefs in a single case also has become the norm," reported Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer counsel Anthony Franze and partner R. Reeves Anderson in their 2020 annual report on amicus filings. "In seven of the past 10 terms, a single case generated at least 80 amicus briefs. These numbers dwarf the marquee cases of the past, when Roe v. Wade produced 23 amicus briefs and Brown v. Board saw just six."

In this term's gun case, "A number of major national law firms have stepped up and filed briefs on behalf of New York and have not shied away from what is a polarizing issue or an issue that sharply divides people on partisan lines," Adam Skaggs, chief counsel and policy director at the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, said.

Skaggs, whose organization filed an amicus brief supporting New York, said he worked closely with the New York Solicitor General's Office to coordinate its supporting briefs. Giffords' own brief was drafted by Joshua Matz, partner in New York's Kaplan Hecker & Fink.

Other briefs on New York's behalf were drafted by such firms as Arnold & Porter; Davis Wright Tremaine; Perkins Coie; Paul Hastings; Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr; Hogan Lovells; Covington & Burling; Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher; Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison; Morrison & Foerster; Mayer Brown; Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton; and Cooley.

The rifle and pistol association has drawn amicus briefs drafted by law firms including McGuireWoods; Beck Redden; Cooper & Kirk; Hunton Andrews Kurth; Foley & Lardner; Consovoy McCarthy; Dhillon Law Group; Torchinsky & Josefiak; Williams Mullen; Lehotsky Keller; and Schaerr Jaffe.

In the high court case, Kirkland & Ellis partner Paul Clement is counsel to the rifle and pistol association. New York Solicitor General Barbara Underwood represents the state. Clement did not respond to a request for information on coordination of his side's amicus briefs.

Skaggs said the case is interesting and challenging in that it presents not only the substantive question concerning the constitutionality of New York's concealed carry license requirement but also how courts should approach these cases—what methodology should they use: history, text and tradition, or intermediate scrutiny.

"We tried to ensure we covered all bases and provided the best argumentation whatever basic approach the court takes," he said.

There are the usual competing amicus briefs. For example, two briefs on behalf of linguistic, history and law professors, drafted by Morrison & Foerster partner Brian Matsui, and one by attorney Neal Goldfarb supporting New York argue that corpus linguistics, an empirical approach to researching the use and meaning of language, has assembled a large body of new evidence showing that "keep and bear arms" in the Second Amendment actually possessed a collective, militaristic meaning at the founding.

But the NRA Civil Rights Defense Fund, in a brief by Consovoy McCarthy's Taylor Meehan, counters that the corpus linguistics methodology "at least with respect to the Second Amendment, overemphasizes the elite and the newsworthy, with no way to fully account for the history and tradition of the longstanding and fundamental right of self-defense."

History is again a critical element in this battle. Justice Brett Kavanaugh, while a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, said the test for Second Amendment issues should be to examine history, text and tradition.

History professors go toe-to-toe on the Anglo-American history of laws regulating the carrying of weapons in public. And there are competing briefs on whether Kavanaugh's test or the intermediate scrutiny test used by many federal appellate courts and the Second Circuit in this case is the appropriate constitutional inquiry.

Skaggs said the Giffords Center does a lot of gun-related litigation and has existing relationships with particular law firms. Approaching them for amicus assistance was "easy and natural." Sometimes organizations or individuals would ask the center or the New York Solicitor General's Office for help in finding amicus counsel, he added.

"We worked closely with allies to ensure our goal was to present the court with the broadest range of arguments demonstrating why New York's law is consistent with the history and tradition of regulating guns in public," Skaggs said. "And why from a public safety standpoint, these kinds of laws are critically important to keeping our communities safe."

The justices have scheduled arguments Nov. 3. The audio will be livestreamed from the court's home webpage.