The James Wilson Foundation on Natural Rights and the American Founding

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   The Republican Congress had not repealed the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare), but it did […]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 […]

With heavy hearts, we share Prof. Hadley Arkes’s reflection on the passing of his lifelong friend and James Wilson Senior Scholar, Prof. Daniel Robinson: I write, just past tears, to convey the sad news of the death of my dearest friend of 50 years, Daniel Nicholas Robinson.  Dan died Monday night September 17, on the […]

On August 8th, Prof. Hadley Arkes appeared on The Eric Metaxas Show to discuss a variety of subjects with Mr. Metaxas including the Kavanaugh hearing, the state of American jurisprudence on abortion, natural law and moral reasoning, and Prof. Arkes’s earliest days at Amherst. You’re encouraged to listen to the full interview below.