Hadley Arkes

Both sides in the culture war over abortion have been readying themselves for the decision of the Supreme Court this fall on partial-birth abortion. Both sides expect a decision portentous and astounding”for people on both sides seriously expect the Court will use its decision to overturn Roe . . . . Continue Reading »

On Privacy [Remarks at the National Press Club, March 1, 2006] In the run-up to the hearings on Sam Alito, a reporter called from a paper in Sacramento to ask whether the pro-lifers were disturbed that both John Roberts and Sam Alito had accepted a constitutional right to privacy. I explained that . . . . Continue Reading »

O ut of this nettle, danger, we pluck this flower, safety (Henry IV, Part 1). The sense of relief, felt so deeply in the pro-life community on November 3, 2004, seems to have drifted away in the weeks and months since the presidential election. It is already easy to forget how great a threat the . . . . Continue Reading »

That redoubtable crew, the writers who brought forth the symposium “ The End of Democracy? The Judicial Usurpation of Politics” (FT, November 1996) , have apparently contributed to our raging economy. For the symposium has led to further rounds of meetings and essays, and now, We the . . . . Continue Reading »

There was some puzzlement among John Stuart Mill’s contemporaries that he should publish his tract On Liberty , with its deep concern for the tyranny of public opinion, when the press in England was the freest in the world and the public life of the country was vibrant with controversy in . . . . Continue Reading »

Harry Jaffa has remarked about his late teacher Leo Strauss that he had made it his vocation to stand against the tendency of modernity to reject both reason and revelation. Modern social science and philosophy would insist that we can have no ground of reason to speak of the truth or falsity of . . . . Continue Reading »

Wild Beasts and Idle Humors by Daniel Robinson Harvard University Press,311 pages, $29.95 Daniel Robinson, as I recall him, was a striking figure when he landed at Amherst in the late 1960s, and he was made all the more striking as he was viewed against the backdrop of this new setting. He was a . . . . Continue Reading »

We were taping, early in May, a program for public television dealing with “same-sex marriage.” Opposite me was a professor of law, openly gay, who had just written a book in favor of gay marriage. The question before us was whether the states would be obliged to honor the marriage of . . . . Continue Reading »

The story is told of a young student from an exotic place, a colonial dependency of Britain, who was suddenly delivered to Oxford University. The word soon got about that the tradition of cannibalism had not been perfectly extinguished in this young man’s tribe, and a certain concern was . . . . Continue Reading »