The James Wilson Foundation on Natural Rights and the American Founding

JWI Founder and Director Hadley Arkes addresses and challenges the arguments of David French in a essay titled, “David French Channels Monty Python: A Response from Hadley Arkes.” Posted in The American Mind, Prof. Arkes questions French on how far French would be willing to argue with real moral substance in the culture war. French […]

  In June 2019, JWI’s Deputy Director Garrett Snedeker and Intern Jake Rinear shared a discussion with Dr. Samuel Gregg, author of the book Reason, Faith, and the Struggle for Western Civilization (Regnery Gateway Editions, 2019). Dr. Gregg is an author and the director of research at the Acton Institute. Below you may find: A […]

In a piece for The American Mind titled “Does the Right Dare Fight?” JWI Founder and Director Hadley Arkes builds on his previous critique of the Ahmari-French debate. Prof. Arkes first focuses on the reluctance of conservative lawyers to employ moral arguments in defense of the positions they hold.  Prof. Arkes continues by offering several […]

In an article for The American Mind titled “Moral Relativism is our True Constitutional Enemy,” JWI Founder & Director Hadley Arkes uses the debate between Sohrab Ahmari and David French at The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. to illustrate the drift into moral relativism in our jurisprudence. Prof. Arkes traces the roots of […]

In a piece for the Federalist Society titled “The Take Care Act”, Joel Nolette praises a new Senate bill aimed at curbing the growth of the administrative state.  According to Nolette, the Supreme Court embraced wholesale the technocracy of the New Deal Left by stripping the President of removal power in its landmark Humphrey’s Executor […]

In July 2019, JWI’s Deputy Director Garrett Snedeker and Intern Maura Bradley shared a discussion with Mollie Hemingway and Carrie Severino, the authors of the book Justice on Trial: The Kavanaugh Confirmation and the Future of the Supreme Court (Regnery Publishing, 2019). Hemingway is senior editor at the online magazine The Federalist where she covered the Kavanaugh confirmation […]

In a letter to The Wall Street Journal, JWI’s Gunnar Gundersen and Garrett Snedeker respond to an ongoing debate between David French and Marci Hamilton on the meaning of religious liberty. Gundersen and Snedeker offer a fresh perspective on the discussion, together responding to objections from both the Left and the Right.  They dispel the […]

In a piece for The Catholic Thing titled “When Politics Reshapes the Culture,” Professor Hadley Arkes claims that it is in fact politics that reshapes culture, as seen in numerous Supreme Court decisions on abortion, same-sex marriage, and sexual orientation, rather than culture reshaping politics. It is not the culture we must aim to change, but rather politics itself, given the […]

In an essay for Public Discourse titled “The Pursuit of Happiness Rightly Understood”, JWI-affiliated scholar Justin Dyer reintroduces the classical understanding of liberty that inspired the Declaration of Independence.  He challenges the deeply entrenched fallacy that American liberalism is a philosophy of license: hardly a synonym for property, Jefferson’s careful wording reflects the Aristotelian and […]

In an article for First Things titled “Reordering the Public Square”, Gunnar Gundersen defends the government’s role in promoting the common good.  Responding to both liberal and conservative advocates of government neutrality, Gundersen reaches into history to shed light on America’s deep Christian roots.  He finds no legal footing for rigid constitutional interpretations which retool […]