R. R. Reno is sympathetic to nationalism because he sees it as a reaction against disenchantment (“Return of the Strong Gods,” May). While I agree that “the banishment of love from our politics is creating the populism that presently troubles us,” it doesn’t strike me that this populism . . . . Continue Reading »
C. S. Lewis on Politics and the Natural Lawby justin buckley dyer and micah j. watsoncambridge, 170 pages, $44.99 Of the making of books about C. S. Lewis there is no end. Although interest in his thought receded somewhat in the decade or so after his death in 1963, it gradually recovered, has grown . . . . Continue Reading »
For some conservatives, bracing themselves on the night of the election, the evening offered nothing less than a miracle unfolding. But that sense of things was even more pronounced for young lawyers defending religious plaintiffs in the courts, and for the small band of conservatives on the Supreme . . . . Continue Reading »
Just weeks after the sudden death of Justice Antonin Scalia, Fr. Anthony Giambrone, O.P. published an article in America Magazine warning that Catholics inclined to celebrate the life and service of the late Supreme Court justice should not be so inclined to celebrate his judicial philosophy. Fr. . . . . Continue Reading »
Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes gave voice to the “modern” project in law: It would be a gain, he said, “if every word of moral significance could be banished from the law altogether, and other words adopted which should convey legal ideas uncolored by anything outside the law.” The law would . . . . Continue Reading »
I learned in these pages not long ago that it is perilous to express doubts regarding the persuasive power of most natural-law theory in today’s world. Not that I would dream of rehearsing the controversy again; but I will note that, at the time, I took my general point to be not that . . . . Continue Reading »
Although I am grateful to Peter Leithart for his interest in my work and his efforts to understand my views about basic human goods, his critique of my thought on the subject seems to me to have gone (to use his term) awry. Continue Reading »
Anthony Murray worries thatshuddersome Supreme Court justices believe in natural law. It’s too bad that he really doesn’t know the first thing about that topic. Continue Reading »
In the thread below, Chantal Delsol graciously responded to my observation that her more recent book had dropped the occasional references to human nature used in earlier books. While still utilizing the term natural to reference to certain biological determinations, she affirmed that . . . . Continue Reading »