Why do settled principles such as prior restraint or ex post facto laws exist in our jurisprudence? Hadley Arke’s Constitutional Illusions and Anchoring Truths: The Touchstone of the Natural Law examines landmark cases in law in order to sketch both the mystery and natural law based necessity of key facets of American Constitutionalism. With Arkes’ book as the impetus, Arkes and O’Brien further deliberate about the nature of natural law.

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