Under international law, personal self-defense is a well-established human right and is an important foundation of international law itself as well as the constitution of America. From 1893 to 1896, the United States Supreme Court handed down a series of decisions involving self-defense and the carrying and use of firearms for self- defense. These cases laid the foundation for a 1921 opinion, authored by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, which became the most important armed self- defense case in American legal history, upholding and extending the right to armed self-defense.