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Pillar

Politics & Law

The third pillar of a decent society is a just system of politics and law. Such a government does not bind all persons, families, institutions of civil society, and actors in the marketplace to itself as subservient features of an all-pervading authority. Instead, it honors and protects the inherent equal dignity of all persons, safeguards the family as the primary school of virtue, and seeks justice through the rule of law.

Imperfect Pro-Life Lawmaking in Post-Dobbs America 

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trump, rally, crowd

Conservatism’s Enduring Debates

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Matthew Continetti’s new book offers an authoritative account of the complex interplay between conservative ideas, politics, and policy over the past century. His telling of conservative history suggests that if we want to know the movement’s future, we should first look to its past.
Photo of Supreme Court's exterior with pillars and ceiling

The Supreme Court Reins in the Administrative State

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Administrative rules don’t require broad consensus, so they don’t enjoy the benefits of a diverse group’s deliberations. Instead, they reflect the will of the president or administrators. It falls to the Supreme Court to defend Congress’s authority to legislate against the encroachment of the administrative state. Thankfully, the Supreme Court recently did just this in West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency.
michael oakeshott

Michael Oakeshott’s Conservative Disposition

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Though often unconventional and concerned with ideas outside the mainstream of contemporary political conversations, Michael Oakeshott’s reflections on politics and human conduct continue to provide a profound and humane source of inspiration for western liberalism. In an age in which freedom and individuality are increasingly under threat, his vision of a flourishing human life—discovering and developing individual character in the midst of traditional practices—remains more relevant and necessary than ever.
Classroom with crucifix displayed

Another Chink in the Armor of Legal Discrimination against Religious Schools

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In Carson v. Makin, the Supreme Court held that Maine’s exclusion of faith-based schools from a tuition assistance program for students in rural districts violated the Free Exercise Clause. The case, which is in many ways the culmination of a battle for equal treatment of faith-based schools spanning more than a century and a half, has significant implications for education policy.
jacques maritain

Maritain for Our Time: Three Responses to Nathaniel Peters

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Christians today should participate in efforts to preserve our polity and ensure that our laws, policies, and political actions hew as closely to truth as possible in our time and context. But we need to acknowledge the potential limitations of our time and seek ways to make the case for truth in terms that our fellow citizens might accept. We should also recognize that the society for which are striving is unlikely to be much better than what we have had in America. To the extent we desire more we should seek it in the Church.
supreme court

The Magnificence of Dobbs

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Dobbs may be the most important, magnificent, rightly decided Supreme Court case of all time. It is restorative of constitutional principle. It upholds the values of representative, democratic self-government, and the rule of law, at the same time that it supports the protection of fundamental human rights. It is literally a matter of life and death. It is potentially transformative of American society, for the better. It is a rare act of judicial courage and principle. In every way, Dobbs is a truly great decision.
jacques maritain

Maritain for Our Time

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The past half century has seen the breakdown of institutional Christianity on which Jacques Maritain’s political project relied. Nonetheless, the limits of his thought do not vitiate the valuable insights Maritain offers for Christian politics in the twenty-first century. He reminds us that politics is about how to order our life together, not just creating ideals or defeating our enemies. He teaches us that we can order a society toward the temporal truths of Christianity, but that the temporal power of the state is no substitute for the spiritual power of the faith.
jacques maritain

Where Have You Gone, Jacques Maritain?

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Today, Jacques Maritain’s optimistic vision of Christian liberalism is often contested or dismissed as outdated, but a revival of his emphasis on Christian participation in society and politics is urgently needed—and is in many ways already in evidence in Christian political activity in America.
flag, constitution

A Three-Step Program for Originalism

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While some legal scholars have criticized the recently leaked draft Dobbs majority opinion on the basis that it is not originalist, they are overlooking two important points—originalism contains a place for stare decisis (i.e., legal precedent) and American constitutional practice is currently an eclectic mix of originalist and nonoriginalist aspects.
kansas, flag

Kansas, the Courts, and the Constitution: An Ongoing Battle for Human Rights

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In a post-Roe America in which the question of abortion will likely be in the hands of citizens and state lawmakers, it will be particularly important for Kansans to undo their supreme court’s recent error of removing the legal foundation for basic regulations on abortion.
supreme court

Women, Witches, and Abortion: A Misguided Attack on Justice Alito

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A Minnesota law professor’s attack on the draft Dobbs opinion seems based more on desperation than scholarship. This and other misguided efforts to demonize critics of Roe need to be refuted so we can focus our attention on the real issue of the ugly realities of abortion.
flags, china, america

Human Rights, the China Challenge, and American Foreign Policy: A Conversation with Peter Berkowitz

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The aim of our Constitution is to secure freedom in America by securing rights. The aim of American foreign policy should be to secure freedom at home, with a view to opportunities and threats abroad. We must always ask: what’s the best mix of military might, economic power, diplomacy, and championing of human rights that enables us to secure freedom at home and maintain a free and open international order?
flag, church

One Country, Two Faiths

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In their rigorous sociological account of Christianity in America today, George Yancey and Ashlee Quosigk provide many important insights, particularly in relation to progressive Christians, though overall the book simply confirms the enduring truth that Christians have always disagreed among themselves about faith and politics.
supreme court, dark, night

The Conservative Legal Movement at the Edge of Schism

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Josh Craddock’s vision for a post-Roe legislative agenda imaginatively builds on and renews decades of pro-life thinking, but it risks generating resistance within the conservative legal movement. There may be an alternative, more disarming path that conveys to the public the need for Congress to act to protect human life in the womb.
baby, mother, hand

Dobbs and the Pro-Life Future

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The prospect of a post-Roe America calls not only for celebration, but also for a realistic appraisal of the road ahead, which will require the pro-life movement to rebuild itself as a movement that goes beyond partisan divisions and that also helps create a social, political, and economic order in which life is encouraged and supported.
supreme court

A Republic, If We Can Find It

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The overturn of Roe could be a key pivot point back to the ordered, republican decision-making the Constitution demands, encouraging a return to legislative politics that demands calm reflection, moral seriousness, negotiation and compromise, and living with principled disagreement.
flag, sun, trees

The Future of Conservatism: Community, the Common Good, and State Power

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The future of conservatism lies in building a program on political, policy, cultural, social, and educational foundations that can rebuild America from the ground up. Anything short of that will merely prolong our agony.
Photo of Declaration of Independence with flag

Recovering the American Proposition with Peter Augustine Lawler

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Built Better Than They Knew Studies endeavors to show that our practice of self-government rises above simplistic ideological reductions and achieves political equilibrium. From its beginnings, our country has been a blend of ideas, practices, and understandings of what it means to be a free and flourishing human person within community, local and national. That means that our theory must be sufficiently aware of a political practice that involves contrasting accounts of how Americans choose to be constitutional.

Neither a Flatterer nor a Lockean Be: Peter Augustine Lawler as a Catholic Political Philosopher

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Peter Augustine Lawler was a rich, dialectical, and irenic thinker who strove to prevent fruitful tensions from transforming into dangerously implacable oppositions. His wisdom was attuned to the needs of the late modern age. It has been nearly five years since his unexpected death at the age of sixty-five, and his wisdom remains just as needed now as it’s ever been.
peter augustine lawler

Commemorating Peter Augustine Lawler Five Years Later

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Genuine postmodernism—a real reflection on the failure of the modern project—would be a recovery of the idea that the lives of free and rational beings are really directed by purposes given us by nature and God.
covid, vaccine, doctor

Diseased Politics and Politicized Disease

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Solzhenitsyn’s 1968 book Cancer Ward presented a metaphor of the state as a physician to capture what was happening in the Soviet Union. But the book can also help us examine American society in the Age of COVID.
flag, constitution

Calvinball Constitutionalism

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Adrian Vermeule’s new book, an attempt to rescue American constitutional law by recurring to the “classical legal tradition,” is undone by the author’s unreasonable attack on originalism and his inattention to the Constitution and its history.
capitol hill, government, politics

Prophets of the Radical Right

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In a highly accessible and timely new book, Matthew Rose reflects on the criticisms of liberalism of five key thinkers on the “radical right.” He argues carefully and convincingly that, while often morally objectionable and politically utopian, their insights into the failures of liberalism need to be reckoned with by those who wish to preserve the global liberal order.
supreme court, law, justice

Free Exercise and Conservative Judicial Overreach

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During the Covid-19 pandemic, some judicial conservatives have eschewed the virtue of constraint in favor of an ahistorical and excessively libertarian notion of the free exercise of religion. To achieve the correct balance between liberty and order, and to prevent activist judges granting religious exemptions in areas outside of their expertise, conservatives should return to a more realistic view of the limited role of the courts in the regulation of religious practices.

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