The James Wilson Foundation on Natural Rights and the American Founding

In an essay as part of our ongoing collaboration with Law & Liberty, Eric Hageman, James Wilson Fellowship Class of ’16, adds his analysis of the current legal and judicial landscape to the current discussion that has been sparked by “A Better Originalism.” Hageman agrees that the current legal culture is rife with the “sophistry” […]

After being cited twice yesterday in the Court’s much anticipated ruling on religious liberty, JWI Trustee and Senior Scholar Gerard V. Bradley declares that “Fulton v. Philadelphia is a remarkable case indeed.” Professor Bradley outlines where the Court currently stands on the controversial 1990 ruling in Employment Division, Department of Human Resources of Oregon v. Smith. […]

Associate Justice Samuel Alito of the Supreme Court of the United States cited JWI Trustee and Senior Scholar Gerard V. Bradley twice in his concurrence for today’s decision in Fulton v. City of Philadelphia. This highly anticipated ruling on religious liberty has garnered much speculation among the public and is one of the biggest rulings […]

In his column for The Catholic Thing, JWI Founder and Director Prof. Hadley Arkes expresses worry that the Supreme Court might seek to take the easy way out of the ultimate question haunting our jurisprudence: should the Court overturn Roe v. Wade? Prof. Arkes suggests that the Court, under the guise of prudence, may invent […]

SCOTUS101, a Heritage Foundation podcast, recently interviewed JWI Fellowship alumnus and junior associate at the law firm Schaerr Jaffe LLP Joshua Prince (’18) about “how a young lawyer can start a career as an appellate advocate.” The podcast can be heard here.

JWI Trustee and Senior Scholar Gerry Bradley has written a “must-read” law review article that eloquently and forcefully argues for a jurisprudence of Natural Law as a corrective against the ills of progressive approaches to constitutional interpretation and positivist originalism. We share with you the full text of the article below, appearing in the Summer […]

In an article titled “Revisiting ‘Roe’: Why the Supreme Court Decision on Mississippi Case Will Likely Ditch Viability” for the National Catholic Register, JWI Senior Scholar and Trustee Gerry Bradley predicts the approach of certain Justices of the Supreme Court thought to be pro-life after the announcement of that the Court would hear Dobbs v. […]

On an episode of Dissed, a podcast about famous Supreme Court dissents with attorneys Anastasia Boden and Elizabeth Slattery, Prof. Hadley Arkes speaks about the moral grounding for economic liberty in our constitutional order. Prof. Arkes cites Justice Stephen Field’s dissent in the 1873 Slaughterhouse Cases as recognizing the natural right of people to their […]

In his column for The Catholic Thing, JWI Founder and Director Prof. Hadley Arkes comments on the Supreme Court decision to hear Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, a case about a Mississippi law that bans abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy. Prof. Arkes speaks to the motivations behind the outrage from the pro-choice side […]

In an article at Law and Liberty, JWI Scholar Francis Beckwith traces the history and eventual demise of the Lemon Test created by Chief Justice Burger in Lemon v. Kurtzman on its 50th anniversary. The Court has inconsistently applied the Lemon Test for years, amending or ignoring its different prongs as it wishes. Lacking any […]