Hadley Arkes and Robert Miller go one more round on the moral norms that govern speech and the government’s authority in prohibiting immoral speech.
Author: Hadley Arkes (Hadley Arkes)
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Classical Liberalism against Relativism
Robert Miller’s defense of free speech risks removing the moral ground that could explain the rightness or goodness of the freedom we seek to preserve. In place of a moral defense in principle, we would simply have a set of utilitarian guesses: that if we pretend we have no standards of judgment, things will work out better for us in the long run.
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Free Speech, Ordinary People, and Ordinary Judgments: Hadley Arkes responds to Robert Miller
In drawing on the older teaching of the courts, Hadley Arkes argues that it is far more tenable for the Court to teach again the difference between epithets and arguments.
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Substantive Due Process: What is the Question, and Why Does It Matter?
In debates over marriage and abortion, we should make arguments based on constitutional texts and judicial precedent. But would it be legitimate also for judges to consider overarching questions of justice and natural law?
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Recovering Lincoln’s Teaching on the Limits to the Courts–and Giving the News to David Blankenhorn
History clearly demonstrates that the legislative branch can legitimately act to counter the rulings of the judicial branch. This is as true for marriage as it was for slavery.
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Judging Beliefs and Shaping Laws: A Reply to Robert Miller
Legislators and judges not only can but must gauge the moral justification of every law.
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Did Senator Lee Forget the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act?
We don’t need a new resolution from Congress to address the wrongs of clinics like Kermit Gosnell’s—the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act already serves that purpose, and we should restore the civil penalties originally attached to it.
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That’s Entertainment: Free Speech and the Moral Regulation of the Arts
A recent Supreme Court case reveals a division amongst conservatives over the moral foundations of the law.
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The Particular Appeal of Universal Principles
Responding to a review of his most recent book, Hadley Arkes asks some questions about the nature of natural law.
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Swastikas, Burning Crosses, and “God Hates Fags”
It’s time for conservatives and liberals alike to remember that certain words by their very utterance inflict injury.
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Higher Education and the Political Regime
All education is moral education, because it carries an understanding of the things worth knowing—and a hierarchy of the things more or less worthy of being known. Moral education must also point to a certain end: an understanding of the ways of life that are better or worse for human beings. It must point to a certain kind of political regime in providing the cast of our lives: the laws that protect the integrity of families and the professions, and the terms of principle on which a decent people deserve to live. The following article is adapted from the Commencement Address Arkes delivered at Hillsdale College on May 10, 2009.
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Democrats, Obama, and Abortion: Turning Liberalism Incoherent
Can the Democratic Party's awkward position on infanticide and abortion be regarded as simply a lesser matter in an ensemble of "other issues" of higher standing? Or does that position challenge the very coherence of everything else that a liberal party proclaims itself to be?