Russell Hittinger

A generation ago, in the old “New South,” it was said that the War Between the States was not about slavery so much as about honor and, of course, about a proper understanding of the Constitution. Recalled were the military virtues of Jackson, the moral virtues of Lee, and the . . . . Continue Reading »

“To love democracy well, it is necessary to love it moderately.” So concludes Pierre Manent in his book Tocqueville and the Nature of Democracy (1982). But, Manent points out, it is not easy to love democracy moderately. As Tocqueville reported, the democratic revolution separated . . . . Continue Reading »

The Dissent of the Governed: A Meditation on Law, Religion, and Loyalty By Stephen L. Carter Harvard University Press. 167 pp. $19.95 This spring the American media gave considerable attention to critics of the Vatican statement on the Holocaust, “We Remember.” A conspicuous line of . . . . Continue Reading »

“Administration Asks Court to Reject Assisted Suicide,” the headlines ran after Acting Solicitor General Walter Dellinger filed on November 12, 1996 the Justice Department’s amicus curiae briefs urging the Supreme Court to uphold the states’ authority to prohibit . . . . Continue Reading »

In Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992), the Supreme Court made abortion the benchmark of its own legitimacy, and indeed the token of the American political covenant. To those who cannot agree with the proposition that individuals have a moral or constitutional right to kill the unborn, or that such . . . . Continue Reading »

The Return of George Sutherland: Restoring a Jurisprudence of Natural Rights By Hadley Arkes Princeton University Press. 297 pp. $29.95 This work is not strictly speaking a biography, though it reports the key facts about the life of Justice George Sutherland. Hadley Arkes analyzes . . . . Continue Reading »

Less than two years after the citizens of Washington voted by referendum to uphold the state’s prohibition of physician-assisted suicide, a federal judge invalidated the statute as unconstitutional. In Roe v. Washington , decided on May 3, 1994, Judge Barbara Rothstein cited the Supreme Court’s . . . . Continue Reading »

Life’s Dominion: An Argument About Abortion, Euthanasia, and Individual Freedom by Ronald Dworkin Knopf, 273 pages, $23 “It is a major theme of this book,” Ronald Dworkin writes at the outset of Life’s Dominion , that the abortion debate “is based on a widespread . . . . Continue Reading »

I At the end of its 1992 term, the Supreme Court handed down its decision in Planned Parenthood of S.E. Pennsylvania v. Casey . And immediately it became clear that the implications of the decision reached far beyond the resolution of the case.Despite twenty years of general success in electoral . . . . Continue Reading »

It is not hard to understand why when Centesimus Annus was issued in 1991, its economic teachings almost immediately received the most attention. For with respect both to substance and emphasis, Centesimus does represent a considerable development in papal social thought on economic matters. In . . . . Continue Reading »