natural law

Waiting for Dobbs

640px United States Supreme Court Building at night

Hadley Arkes recalls that day, back in 1986, when Justice Byron White, one of the original dissenters in Roe v. Wade, startled Justice John Paul Stevens by suggesting that he too could accept Roe and a “right to abortion” in some form. Stevens seemed genuinely baffled. What White was offering was an understanding that would keep Roe v. Wade as a shell, while the substance was removed. Professor Arkes tries to reconstruct that argument here as an anticipation of what might happen if the Supreme Court seeks to take “the low door under the whole” in the Dobbs case—sustaining the law in Mississippi while affecting not to overrule Roe v. Wade.

‘Dobbs’ and the Conservative Legal Movement

If ‘Dobbs’ is decided following the ‘neutral principles’ of constitutional interpretation, it would not mean the end of abortion, according to Gerald Bradley, or even the beginning of the end of it. ‘Dobbs’ would instead be the start of a whole new phase of the political struggle over abortion. Yet the Constitution requires more.

Corporations, Churches, Persons, and the Natural Law

2016 Kosciol sw. Jana Chrzciciela w Oldrzychowicach Klodzkich 01

Robert Miller responds to Prof. Adam MacLeod and argues that corporations are not real things of the world, but rather the outgrowth of human beings who for legal purposes should be considered the only entities that be judged to be in accord with law and morality.

Why State Courts Matter

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Jesse Merriam responds to Holden Tanner and Josh Hammer on how a jurisprudence of Natural Law can be effectuated at the state court level

Anchoring Truths
Anchoring Truths is a James Wilson Institute project
The James Wilson Institute’s Mission is to restore to a new generation of lawyers, judges, and citizens the understanding of the American Founders about the first principles of our law and the moral grounds of their own rights.
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