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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.

Romans 13 and the American Revolution 

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Protest sign saying "I am Pro-Truth"

The Danger of “Manifest Truth” Politics

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If we understand that truth is inherently tentative and provisional and acknowledge that we must cultivate intellectual humility, we could mitigate many of the worst repercussions of social media on politics.

An Afghan American Woman’s Appeal: Don’t Abandon Afghan Women Now

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Human rights, including women’s rights, are not determined by whoever is in charge. They are perpetual and fundamental. American calls for gender equality around the world ring hollow without hard security to back them up.

John Rawls, Contemporary Liberalism, and Natural Law

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John Rawls cannot get to the most fundamental issues of political philosophy because that would entail a comprehensive theory, which is too divisive, in his own view, to serve as the basis for a public philosophy.

Social Darwinism and the Natural Law

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One way of understanding the social Darwinists’ enterprise is to view it as an attempt to reintegrate science and philosophy, which had been torn asunder by modernity. While they seek this reintegration, they do so on uniquely modern terms: Philosophy is reduced to empirical, naturalistic science, that is, to the process, without the ends, or essences, or highest things. Their notion is that we can reduce human sciences, including politics, to relatively simple principles. This is contrary to the Aristotelian or ancient view, which held that politics is much harder than physics precisely because one must take into account unpredictable behavior, as well as choice-worthy purposive behavior toward complex ends—rather than more predictable motions and processes toward simple ends.

Natural Law and American Civil Rights Movements

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It was on the foundation of St. Augustine’s natural law theory, then, that Martin Luther King, Jr. discovered the grounds of civil disobedience: “A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of Harmony with the moral law.” Nor did he stop there. He invoked Aquinas, Martin Buber, Socrates, Tillich, and Niebuhr (among other authorities) to establish that the claim he defended was not a parochial claim merely derived from majority rule. To defend civil rights for black people meant to prove that “segregation is not only politically, economically and sociologically unsound, it is morally wrong and sinful.”

American Constitutions: Natural Law and Constitution-Making in the Founding Era

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In order to understand the role of natural law in the American founding, it is helpful to examine the early state constitutions that preceded the US Constitution. Not only did many of them explicitly recognize natural rights as pre-political rights to which all individuals are entitled, they also proclaimed all political power to be inherent in the people, governments to be legitimate only insofar as they secure these rights and are grounded in popular authority, and, therefore, that the people have an inalienable right to reform or abolish such governments that fail or cease to serve these ends.

Natural Law and the Declaration of Independence

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To those who wrote and signed the Declaration of Independence, political liberty and natural law went together: Nature summons man, individually and collectively, to self-government and guides him in the exercise of his power of choice.

Natural Law and the Colonial Roots of American Constitutionalism

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Natural law thinking profoundly shaped the way American and British leaders approached issues involving rights, sovereignty, and constitutional government. However, the imperial authorities and their colonial opponents often appealed to different, and even conflicting, strains of the natural law tradition.

Common Law and the Law of Reason

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Like cousins who resemble one another, common law and natural law are sometimes confused. There is in fact a deep affinity between common law and natural law, but it is better at the outset to describe their differences, and best to do this historically.

The Protestant Reformers and the Natural Law Tradition

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However deeply entrenched the natural law’s neglect or opposition is among today’s Protestants, it cannot be attributed to the magisterial Reformers of the sixteenth century. Although it is decidedly true that they championed a particular understanding of grace and faith that took issue with their Roman Catholic counterparts, this was not to the exclusion of other vehicles of divine agency. Rather, they assumed the natural law as a part of the fabric of the created order and therein maintained continuity with those across the Reformation divide.

The Natural Law Theory of Thomas Aquinas

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Law, of its various sorts, has a role to play in humans’ full realization of their nature by free acts. What role? To ask this question is to seek to grasp Thomas’s natural law teaching in the context of his overall metaphysical cosmology.

Freedom’s Law: A Primer on Natural Law, Natural Rights, and American Constitutionalism

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All this week Public Discourse will be republishing select essays from "Natural Law, Natural Rights, and American Constitutionalism," a project of the Witherspoon Institute that was made possible by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities as part of its "We the People" initiative. At a time when we have called our traditions and history into question, we provide a primer into the history of our people and our ways of properly understanding freedom and the liberal order.

Not a National Family: Critical Race Theory, Civic Education, and the Ties That Bind

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If a shared identity is to emerge and persist, if citizen strangers are to have a shot at becoming civic friends who recognize a mutual obligation to create a just land, the foundational principles of our constitutional order must be consciously taught and reaffirmed. And, of course, teaching and affirming these principles does not itself entail a claim that America has historically lived up to them.

Why American Conservatives Should Be Wary of “One Nation Conservatism”

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One Nation Conservatism is itself a type of fusionism, a traditionalist-progressive mix rather than a traditionalist–classical liberal one. Traditionalists should not abandon a pragmatic alliance with the latter for intellectual commitment to the former.
Website

The Centralization of the Internet

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Most of the Internet’s traffic now flows through the networks of a few large companies rather than a multitude of small transit providers, and the Internet’s physical infrastructure is being reshaped to meet this new reality. But relying on a few providers to host all the content on the Internet makes it possible for just a few companies to shut down entire services or control speech.
Bible and flag

Did the Chief Sneak a Smith Workaround Past the Liberal Justices in Fulton?

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A recent dissent by Justice Kavanaugh and the Supreme Court’s unanimous decision in Fulton v. City of Philadelphia offer a roadmap for litigants seeking religious liberty exemptions.
Christ as bread of life

Catholics Must Reclaim the Term “Social Justice”

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Although the ideas presented in The Concept of Social Justice are just a start, they provide a crucial foundation for the salvific and eternal work that Catholics must complete in the political arena.
Elephant and Donkey on US flag

Truth, Civility, and the Crisis for Conservatives: A Response to Hope Leman

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If conservatives are to abandon truth-seeking and engaging with political rivals, what then is the alternative? If we resign the enterprise of reasoned debate, of at least attempting to persuade, then where do we go from here? Do we simply line up with the one in six Americans in favor of military rule and hope that our side prevails in the coup?
Bill Cosby's Star on the walk of fame

The Cosby Problem

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Bill Cosby’s release is a consequence of a criminal justice system run by insiders seeking efficient results. This debacle sheds light on the disappointing state of our criminal justice system, the overly wide latitude afforded to prosecutors, and the mechanical way in which the system operates.
Ohio Statehouse

Dobbs Won’t Fix State Courts. To Do That, Pro-Life Lawmakers Must Step Up Now.

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In some states, it’s almost impossible for pro-life governors to appoint originalist judges. That’s why we must pursue state-level judicial reforms before Dobbs is decided. To make the most of this opportunity, most of us need to turn our attention away from DC and toward our state capitols.
Fire near protest

My Problem with Truth-Seeking, Open-Mindedness and . . . Robert P. George

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Robert P. George is the leading conservative advocate of the importance of good faith dialogue with those he calls “reasonable people of good will” on all sides of the political spectrum. But is such dialogue still possible in our new woke environment?
Declaration of Independence with an American flag

In Defense of Common Good Originalism

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Many key constitutional clauses were drafted as compromise provisions intended to win over the members of intensely warring intellectual and political tribes. This ought to cut strongly in favor of a dispositional humility about an interpreter’s ability to definitively discern the most accurate original meanings of these clauses. In these situations, statesmen ought to err on the side of certain substantive ideals of natural justice, human flourishing, and the common good.
Constitution

The Bad History of Common Good Originalism

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Common-good originalism’s historical understanding of the Constitution’s adoption is perhaps its weakest link. The Constitution emerged from a negotiated consensus of a complex popular sovereign—a fact that ought to reinforce a judge’s commitment to the written text.
Religious symbols

Don’t Rain on Fulton’s Parade: Religious Freedom Is Winning at the Supreme Court

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Defenders of the free exercise of religion need to accept that we are playing a long game. Religious freedom is winning, even if the Court’s religious freedom jurisprudence develops over the span of more than one term.

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