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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.

A Covenant Torn Asunder

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Public Discourse

The Feminist, Pro-Father, and Pro-Child Case against No-Fault Divorce

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No-fault divorce hurts women, men, and children. So why is it still legal?
Public Discourse

Justice Kennedy’s 40,000 Children

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During oral arguments on Prop 8, Justice Kennedy alluded to the views of children of same-sex couples as if their desires and concerns are identical to and uncritical of their parents’ decisions. But the reality is far more complicated.
Public Discourse

Proposition 8 and Discrimination: Marriage on Trial at the Supreme Court

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Proposition 8 does not, contrary to Judge Vaughan Walker’s claims, treat equals unequally.
Public Discourse

Terrorism Triangle in Boston

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Complex rather than single causality is the norm, not the exception, for terrorism.
Public Discourse

Religion: A Public or a Private Right?

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Our public debate about religious liberty is missing a clear definition of religion. The absence of that definition has generated confusion, frustration, shrill voices, and short tempers.
Public Discourse

What Fiction Can Tell Us about Afghanistan

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People are at the heart of what we are doing in Afghanistan. Novels can help us understand them and their cultures in all their subtlety and complexity.
Public Discourse

An American Decline?

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As Stephen Krason’s new book argues, America has departed from the founders’ design, and the founders may be partially responsible. But this claim is only as strong as the interpretation of the founding behind it.
Public Discourse

Justice Sotomayor and the Path to Polygamy

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The oral arguments on Proposition 8 at the Supreme Court suggest that there is very good reason to believe that the declaration of a “right” to same-sex marriage will set us on the path to polygamy.
Public Discourse

Cats and Dogs and Marriage Laws

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When we define our terms based on the results we want, rather than on the reality of the thing being defined, all hell breaks loose.
Public Discourse

Marriage, Religious Liberty, and the Ban Myth

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It’s a myth that marriage law “bans” same-sex relationships because it treats marriage as the union of a man and a woman.
Public Discourse

Why U.N. Feminists Should Want to Partner with the Holy See

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Both sociological evidence and the teachings of Christianity show that religion is a powerful ally for promoting the equality and dignity of women. Adapted from remarks delivered at the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women.
Public Discourse

Our First Right: Religious Liberty

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America’s founding documents assume an implicitly religious anthropology—an idea of human nature, nature’s God, and natural rights—that many of our leaders no longer share. Adapted from testimony submitted to the United States Commission on Civil Rights.
Public Discourse

Property from the Inside

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While the state has a role to play in promoting the common good, left unchecked by constitutional strictures the regulatory state will crowd private property out of public life. Without private property, our nation would be impoverished not only materially but also morally. The second in a two-part series.
Public Discourse

Property and the Regulatory State at the Supreme Court

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The Supreme Court’s conflicted rulings on whether the government must compensate property owners for burdening their rights and interests raises questions about the value of private property in American life. The first in a two-part series.
Public Discourse

God and the Profits: Religious Liberty for Money-Makers

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The Bible says “You cannot serve both God and mammon.” The Constitution doesn’t.
Public Discourse

Are We Guilty for Our Religious Belief?

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Is religious belief wrong, and are religious believers morally culpable for their false beliefs?
Public Discourse

We Don’t Need to Redefine Marriage to Fix Policy Problems

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Good public policy can meet the needs of all Americans without redefining marriage.
Public Discourse

The Supreme Court’s First Assault on Marriage

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The Supreme Court first put marriage on its track of decline forty-one years ago, when it ruled that states could not limit the sale of contraceptives to unmarried couples.
Public Discourse

Liberalism’s Logic and America’s Challenge: A Reply to Schlueter and Muñoz

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The Founders’ vision of the “common good” was not the pre-modern natural law conception of an objective human good, but a conception of “mutual advantage” shaped by the social contract framework. This logic of liberalism has driven our country to its current political and cultural problems.
Public Discourse

Sustaining American Liberalism in Principle and Practice

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While we should reject misguided claims that our founders adopted political voluntarism, we should follow suggestions for strengthening civic life—and thereby sustain American liberalism—through local government, families, churches, and other civic associations.
Public Discourse

Natural Law Liberalism Beyond Romanticism

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To reject the presence of natural law in documents of the Founding era is to embrace both cynicism and romanticism.
Public Discourse

Why We Can’t Just “Lighten Up” Over the HHS Mandate

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Preserving the freedom to witness to the truths one believes, not merely avoiding cooperation with evil, is what’s primarily at stake in the HHS mandate debate.
Public Discourse

Deciding Who Gets Religious Freedom: The Latest HHS “Accommodation”

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In the latest proposed version of the HHS mandate, the government presumes to say which employers get religious freedom and how much they get, but all religious employers are obligated to live out their beliefs and should have the freedom to do so.
Public Discourse

Bad Science and Failed Freedom Protections in the HHS Mandate

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The latest proposed amendment to the HHS mandate still draws on empirically unsound data and violates religious freedom.
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