The James Wilson Foundation on Natural Rights and the American Founding

Tom Johnson was recently hired as a general counsel for the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). Previously, he was the Deputy Solicitor General for the State of West Virginia. He also practiced appellate and constitutional law and labor and employment law as Of Counsel at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP. Prior to working at Gibson Dunn, […]

In a piece for the Claremont Review of Books, JWI Senior Scholar Prof. Michael Uhlmann reviews Prof. Joseph Postell’s Bureaucracy in America: The Administrative State’s Challenge to Constitutional Government. Prof. Uhlmann articulates the reasons for the intellectual, legal, and political development of the administrative state. Some Excerpts: “By allowing agency rules to have binding effect […]

Writing in the Claremont Review of Books, Prof. Hadley Arkes details the intellectual poverty of defending a notion of “free of speech” that denies any limiting principles on speech. The piece,  “Conservatives and Freedom of Speech: Backing into Relativism?” is nicely described by Scott Johnson of PowerlineBlog: “Professor Arkes focuses on the philosophical ground on […]

Writing in The Catholic Thing, Professor Hadley Arkes defends Gordon Giampietro, a nominee for a federal district judgeship in Wisconsin in a piece titled “Does Gordon Giampietro Need a Defense?”  A “controversy” was generated because of a supportive comment that Mr. Giampietro posted on a column written by Professor Arkes in The Catholic Thing four […]

In “What’s Wrong with Rod Dreher’s Straussian Narrative of the American Constitution” Professor Paul R. DeHart examines the argument that modernity begins with the Enlightenment and how that premise impacts any understanding of the constitution. Professor DeHart teaches  Political Science at Texas State University. Some Excerpts: “While it is certainly true that Christianity has moral implications and […]

Earlier this year the Claremont Review of Books published Prof. Michael Uhlmann’s review of Thomas Leonard’s Illiberal Reformers. Prof. Uhlmann, a JWI Senior Scholar, notes “that eugenics lay at the very center of the progressive program,” and how it it powerfully brought together “a dogmatic faith in science and the scientific method, a comparable belief in […]

In early December 2017, the Supreme Court heard oral argument in Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission. The case concerns a weave of questions on freedom of religious expression, limitations on speech, and laws on public accommodations in the state of Colorado. In an essay for the Claremont Review of Books Digital,  ”Jack Phillips Has His Day […]

In the digital age, intellectual property – from proprietary algorithms to music – may be just as valuable as real estate and factories.  In a piece for Starting Points Journal entitled, “Are Intellectual Property Rights Moral?,”  JWI Affiliated Scholar and intellectual property attorney Gunnar Gundersen examines the moral grounds and judicial precedents concerning property rights, with […]

Dr. Yuval Levin is the founding editor of National Affairs and contributing editor to National Review and The Weekly Standard. The Hertog Fellow and Director of the Bioethics and American Democracy program at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, Dr. Levin is a leading figure in the health care policy  debate. We invite you to read our interview with Dr. Levin: […]

In a recent article for the Federalist Society Review, Professor David Forte, JWI Senior Scholar, corrects our jurisprudential history on the Contract Clause by re-examining two opinions from the Supreme Court of the 1930s: Home Building & Loan v. Blaisdell and Worthen v. Thomas. Professor Forte articulates how, contrary to a standard narrative in constitutional […]