The James Wilson Foundation on Natural Rights and the American Founding

In an eloquent essay for the Library of Law and Liberty, JWI Senior Scholar Prof. David Forte articulates the “radical premises” Founding Father John Dickinson used as justification for independence. Dickinson’s chief contributions to The Bill of Rights and Declaration of Grievances, along with the implementation of the Articles of Association, make him one of […]

 Reihan Salam In November 2018, JWI’s Deputy Director Garrett Snedeker and Intern Scott Kim shared a discussion with Reihan Salam, author of the book Melting Pot Or Civil War?: A Son of Immigrants Makes the Case Against Open Borders (Penguin Group, 2018). Salam is executive editor of National Review and contributing editor at The Atlantic. […]

Reed O’Connor has been quite an interesting federal district court judge in Texas, and this last week, in Texas v. U.S., he managed to stir ripples in our politics and law as he moved, in effect, to strike down Obamacare.   The Republican Congress had not repealed the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare), but it did […]

Prof. Roberta Bayer offers an excellent summary of James Wilson’s views on where democracy’s legitimacy comes from in a piece at the Library of Law and Liberty. Wilson believed that democracy was premised on a capacity to have a knowledge of justice. This knowledge of justice was found through reason and conscience, both of which […]

In partnership with Prof. Randy Barnett’s Center for the Constitution at Georgetown University Law Center, we were pleased to host the JWI Conference: “Who’s Afraid of Substantive Due Process?” on April 21, 2017. In its 2018 Summer Issue, the Georgetown Journal for Law & Public Policy published the prepared remarks of four of the participants […]

On October 19th, 2018, Judge Janice Rogers Brown, formerly of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, delivered a lecture to a capacity crowd on C.S Lewis and the role of the judge. The lecture was titled, “Judicial Impiety: Dissin the Tao.” Judge Brown drew upon the lessons in C.S. Lewis’s The Abolition […]

In late July 2018, JWI’s Deputy Director Garrett Snedeker and Intern Gregory Mill shared a discussion with Prof. Joseph Postell, author of the book Bureuacracy in America: The Administrative State and American Constitutionalism (University of Missouri Press, 2017). Prof. Postell is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Colorado-Colorado Springs. Postell has written […]

On October 2nd, the Institute for Religion and Democracy hosted the 8th Annual Diane Knippers Memorial Lecture, featuring Professor Hadley Arkes. The title of the lecture was “Religious Freedom and the Crisis over Conservative Jurisprudence.” You may watch the program below:

Prof. Arkes recently sat down with Mark Bauerlein of First Things to discuss some concerns about recent conservative approaches to the issue of speech. In reacting to intolerance on college campuses, Prof. Arkes argues that conservatives, including in some opinions of the Supreme Court, have veered into moral relativism, defending any kind of speech as […]

With the testimonies of Judge Brett Kavanaugh and Prof. Christine Blasey Ford looming, Prof. Hadley Arkes makes the case that Prof. Ford’s story warrants close scrutiny, including rigorous cross-examinations. Prof. Arkes demonstrates the absurdity and immorality of abstaining from fully investigating Dr. Ford’s background. Judge Kavanaugh’s background has been investigated by the FBI numerous times […]