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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.

Democracy without Religion Is Dead: Part II

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Public Discourse

Come Out and Celebrate?

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National Coming Out Day’s emphasis on “celebrating” students’ self-identification as LGBT undermines Notre Dame’s pastoral responsibility to help students develop an integrated sexual identity and a true understanding of human dignity.
Public Discourse

The Next Human Rights Revolution

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Renowned human-rights activist Chen Guangcheng calls on American citizens to recognize that China’s barbaric violations of human dignity threaten justice on a global scale. Americans must take practical, immediate actions, no matter how small, to abolish these atrocities.
Public Discourse

Faith and (Dorm) Life

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Faith-based dorms at secular universities offer a positive alternative to the indoctrination and debasement present on many campuses.
Public Discourse

Same-Sex Marriage Makes Liberal Judges Irrational

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A New Jersey judge’s contorted and nonsensical decision that the state is responsible for the federal government’s failure to recognize same-sex marriage highlights the irrationality that permeates the campaign for “marriage equality.”
Public Discourse

Internet Pornography & the First Amendment

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Current jurisprudence protecting pornography as “artistic expression” contradicts the Founders’ understanding and the underlying purposes of the First Amendment’s protection of speech, and it fails to protect Americans from the social and personal trauma caused by pornography. The second in a two-part series.
Public Discourse

The HHS Mandate, Hosanna-Tabor, and the Question of Religious Organizations

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The Supreme Court’s decision in Hosanna-Tabor v. EEOC shows that we need a workable legal framework for self-proclaimed religious organizations to claim protection under the Free Exercise Clause.
Public Discourse

The Perils of Liberal Moralism: On Syria and Thomas More

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Our president’s assumption that he should punish Syria for a moral, but not legal, transgression undermines international law.
Public Discourse

The Reluctant Eudaimonist: The Flaws of “Pragmatic Liberalism”

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Robert Miller’s pragmatic liberalism fails to strike a satisfactory balance between Aristotelian-Thomistic eudaimonism and American liberalism because he does not defend the universality of moral principles.
Public Discourse

Politics in Witness to Truth

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The political and spiritual journey of a black Catholic staffer at the Democratic National Committee who quits his job in response to the Obama administration’s aggressive pro-abortion tactics and becomes a proud Republican.
Public Discourse

Moral Anthropology, Social Ontology, and Authentic Human Freedom

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The late Jean Bethke Elshtain understood that human beings are inherently relational, arguing that families are essential for human flourishing.
Public Discourse

America’s Declining Commitment to Self-Government

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The president and Congressional supporters of attacking Syria suggest by their actions a strong disregard for public opinion and self-government.
Public Discourse

How to Avoid an Unconstitutional War: A Beginner’s Guide for Presidents and Congresses

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Without authorization from Congress, American presidents can only start unconstitutional wars, even if they are motivated by good intentions.
Public Discourse

Grounding Our Right to Religious Freedom

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Our right to religious freedom is best grounded in the universal duty to seek ultimate truth, and not in human autonomy.
Public Discourse

Lessons on Conscience Protection from the UK

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Unless Americans respond to the Supreme Court’s recent marriage decisions with greater protections for the rights of conscience, our first freedom is sure to lose force, just as it has in the UK.
Public Discourse

With Malice Toward Some

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Lincoln’s Order of Retaliation—a command to kill Confederate prisoners as punishment for the South’s massacre of black Union soldiers—can help frame our view of presidential military power today.
Public Discourse

The “Mystery of Life” Makes Law a Mystery

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Since our culture has embraced Justice Kennedy’s “mystery of life” philosophy, we lack a coherent framework for making laws that don’t just cater to personal preferences.
Public Discourse

Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity, and Employment Law

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The Employment Non-Discrimination Act would equate sexual orientation and gender identity, ambiguous and malleable concepts, with immutable features like race, color, and ethnicity as classes worthy of special legal protection.
Public Discourse

What Is Religious Freedom?

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In its fullest and most robust sense, religion is the human person’s being in right relation to the divine. All of us have a duty, in conscience, to seek the truth and to honor the freedom of all men and women everywhere to do the same.
Public Discourse

Mary Ann Glendon and the Structure of Religious Freedom

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For its protection and flourishing, religious freedom needs not only limited government but also a social order that gives plenty of room to civic institutions and associations.
Public Discourse

The Legal Circus That Killed Proposition 8

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The process that killed Prop 8 in California should concern anyone who cares about democracy and the rule of law. The cheaters won.
Public Discourse

The DOMA Decision and the Inscrutable Anthony Kennedy

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When Justice Anthony Kennedy writes a majority opinion for the Supreme Court, he is famous for baffling his fellow justices (particularly Justice Antonin Scalia) as well as lower court judges.
Public Discourse

The New York Times, Church-State Law, and Equality

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Prohibiting religious schools from using public facilities would not protect religious freedom; it would encourage further discrimination against religion and religious people.
Public Discourse

Without Words to Describe

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Those of us who value life over death, vibrant religious exercise, and the good of natural marriage need to find our voice again even though the powers-that-be are redefining words arbitrarily and avoiding reason.
Public Discourse

The Constitutionality of Protecting Unborn Babies at 20 Weeks

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There is nothing in the text, history, or tradition of the U.S. Constitution that precludes extending the most basic protections of the law to twenty week-old (or older) unborn children who are capable of experiencing pain. Adapted from testimony delivered on July 8th before the Texas State Senate Committee on Health and Human Services.

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