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Author: Adam J. MacLeod (Adam J. MacLeod)

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December 5, 2022December 9, 2022Conscience Protection, Constitutional Law, Supreme Court

Business Owners Have Rights, Too

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In the 303 Creative case before the Supreme Court, Colorado officials assert that all proprietors who open their services to the public have a duty to serve any potential customer on demand. But public accommodation laws do not give customers a general right to be served. Proprietors may terminate a customer’s license and refuse service for any good reason, as long as it is rationally related to the purposes of the business and not an arbitrary or inherently illicit classification, such as race.

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February 20, 2022February 20, 2022Constitutional Law, Natural Law, Voting

Fictions and Lies in a Lawless Age

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The law must stand above the powerful, and we should worry when the law is suspended or disregarded. But where is the law to be found? Most of the law consists of important fictions which live in the minds of lawyers. But what makes the fiction plausible? And how is the law’s benefit to be assessed unless we measure it against fixed, non-conventional, non-fictional standards of justice?

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October 6, 2020October 2, 2020Conscience Protection, Constitutional Law, First Amendment, Liberalism, Marriage, Politics, Public Discourse, Religion and the Public Square

Suing for Peace in the Wedding Vendor Wars

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Andrew Koppelman surely is correct that a same-sex couple must find it humiliating and embarrassing to be turned away from a wedding vendor. He is also right that the costs of using public law to remedy such indignities are significant, especially for the conscientious owners whose livelihoods are at stake. So, what to do? What we need is an institution that is capable of resolving these fraught disputes on a case-by-case basis. Fortunately, the common law provides such institutions.

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September 10, 2020September 11, 2020Book Reviews, Natural Law, Philosophy, Politics

Natural Law for a Lawless People

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Hobbes’ thin conception of natural law cannot sustain all the activities of a fully flourishing community, but it does appeal to those who live in fear of losing their basic security. Many people are possessed by that fear today, as many were in Hobbes’ time. But we have much to lose if the Hobbesian view of law prevails.

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March 1, 2020March 2, 2020Culture, Marriage

Essences or Intersectionality: Understanding Why We Can’t Understand Each Other

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A major source of political division in America is the difference between those who believe in essences and those who follow intersectionality. Those who hold theories of intersectionality believe that human identity and much of reality itself is a construct that they can revise, not an objective reality that we can all know. This limits the possibility of political discourse: we cannot reason together if one side no longer believes in the capacity of reason to discern what is true.

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October 28, 2019October 29, 2019Constitutional Law, Foreign Affairs, Natural Law

Piracy, Protests, and the Problem of China

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America’s relations with China should proceed from the recognition that the Chinese government is lawless. China flouts the rule of law, not occasionally or incidentally but characteristically, because the government understands itself as the source of law and unconstrained by it. The problem of China reminds us of the deeper laws that all nations must respect and that determine whether or not our positive laws are legally just.

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June 12, 2019June 10, 2019Abortion, Constitutional Law

A Case of Stolen Jurisprudence in Kansas

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Kansas’s Supreme Court randomly festooned its recent decision on abortion with impressive terms, without making the slightest effort to learn the terms’ meanings. The court identifies “common law” with judicial opinions and thus shoehorns innovative judicial decisions into its discussion of “natural rights.”

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