Following the 2008 decision in District of Columbia v. Heller, Hadley Arkes wrote that Justice Scalia’s putatively originalist opinion might have appealed to “something resembling—brace yourself—‘natural law.’” After all, Scalia’s look into the text and history of the Second Amendment revealed that it codified a right that preexisted the Constitution. Arkes queried, “Was he suggesting …
Editors Note: This piece originally appeared in the Per Curiam section of the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy as a response to a review by Prof. Andrew Koppelman of Hadley Arkes’s Mere Natural Law. It is reproduced here with permission from the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy.
Alex MacDonald, a DC-based labor lawyer, touches on the historical roots of the right to work, the right’s connection with natural-law principles, and its return to modern jurisprudence. Informed by JWI Co-Director Hadley Arkes’s Mere Natural Law, Alex examines how that return could transform modern labor law, especially the concept of exclusive representation. This episode, …
Editor’s Note: This piece was originally published in late November 2024 at The New Digest. It is reproduced at Anchoring Truths with permission. We reproduce it here for timeliness in the current debates over immigration and the broader American constitutional order. The Trump administration’s declaration of a national emergency at the southern border has echoes …
“Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the transmission of fire.” (Gustav Mahler, 1860 – 1911) The first official prayer in America’s newly-constituted Continental Congress took place in September 1774. Through this event, Congress firmly emphasized the religious ethos of America’s founding. In particular, primacy and honour was accorded to the 3,000 year-old Hebrew scriptures …
Join the Anchoring Truths Podcast for both a look back and a look ahead for originalism, through the lens of one of the most influential living Americans on our constitutional order. Edwin Meese III’s tenure as Attorney General under President Reagan was one of the most significant ones – and almost no one knows it. Ed …
Video Recordings of the Norton Lectures Delivered by JWI Co-Director Prof. Hadley Arkes at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, October 8-9, 2024. Lecture I: The Enduring Rediscovery: The Polis as a Moral Association Lecture II: On Aristotle and Political Science as the “Architectonic Science” Lecture III: The American Founding and Natural Theology – And a …
JWI Affiliated Scholar & Professor of Philosophy Frank Beckwith confronts a troubling trend among some legal scholars who, in the aftermath of the Dobbs decision, have constructed and advocated for a right to abortion rooted in religious liberty. Since the overturning of Roe v. Wade and Casey in Dobbs, an increasing number of scholars argue …
Join host Garrett Snedeker and appellate litigator Edward “Ed” Wenger to discuss a recent decision by the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals that allowed limits on gun magazine capacity within the nation’s capital. The court affirmed a lower court’s opinion that “extra large capacity magazines” could be prohibited within city limits, but Judge Justin Walker …
