The James Wilson Foundation on Natural Rights and the American Founding

JWI Founder and Director Hadley Arkes writes on the passing of one of his dearest friends, JWI Senior Scholar Michael Uhlmann. We come to our friends today with heart-breaking news, on the death of our beloved Michael Uhlmann yesterday in California. In my own case, I’ve lost one of my dearest, closest friends, and the […]

In a recent piece for Law & Liberty, JWI Affiliated Scholar Mark David Hall of George Fox University critiques using the age of religious memorials on public property as the determining factor for their constitutionality. The primary problem with this argument, he writes, is the lack of an agreed-upon age at which monuments become recognized […]

In another article for The Catholic Thing titled “The Enduring Scalia,” Prof. Hadley Arkes, founder and director of the James Wilson Institute, continues his critique of the “subjectivizing” of conscience and religious objection. He analyzes Justice Antonin Scalia’s famous opinion in Employment Division v. Smith (1990). Prof. Arkes defends Justice Scalia as inviting the Religious […]

JWI Founder & Director Hadley Arkes, in a piece for The American Mind titled, “Bill Barr Gives a Speech,” takes up the defense of Attorney General Bill Barr and his October 2019 speech at the Notre Dame Law School. Prof. Arkes responds to critics who mocked Barr’s address on religious liberty as one of the […]

In a recent essay published at Law & Liberty titled, “The Supremes Ride the Spiral Down,” Prof. Hadley Arkes laments the recent Supreme Court decision in Iancu v. Brunetti, in which the Court allowed a profane trademark for a streetwear company. Drawing on the great Scottish Enlightenment philosopher Thomas Reid, Prof. Arkes criticizes some justices […]

Steve Hayward of The Power Line Show caught up with Prof. Hadley Arkes, Founder and Director of the James Wilson Institute, for a wide-ranging conversation about free speech, moral relativism, abortion, and other constitutional questions. You can find a link to the conversation here.

In an article titled, “Steps from God…to the Religion of the Self” in The Catholic Thing, Prof. Hadley Arkes traces the transformation of the identification of religion solely with beliefs rather than with a combination of beliefs and reasoned truths. The erosion of the meaning of religion, Prof. Arkes says, can be most clearly seen […]

In the days and weeks ahead, JWI will feature some remembrances of our dear friend Michael Uhlmann who passed away on October 8, 2019. We will update this page with remembrances as we receive them. Everyone’s been asked the hypothetical question: if you could share dinner with three people living or dead, who would they […]

In a review for the Claremont Review of Books, Prof. Michael M. Uhlmann, a James Wilson Institute Senior Scholar, analyzed the commentary of former White House Counsel Peter Wallison on the administrative state. Prof. Uhlmann traces the rise of the administrative state through the 20th century and the now growing critique of its policies. The […]

In a piece titled “Athens and Jerusalem, Rome and America” for The American Mind, Gunnar Gundersen responds to the argument of Patrick Deneen and others who claim that America is a Hobbesian experiment, made without Christian moral reasoning.  Gundersen, a JWI Affiliated Scholar and Attorney, argues instead that the history of the United States shows […]