Hadley Arkes is the Edward N. Ney Professor of Jurisprudence and American Institutions emeritus at Amherst College and the founder and director of the James Wilson Institute on Natural Rights & the American Founding in Washington, D.C.

Dr. Arkes is the author of many books on politics, political philosophy and jurisprudence, including Bureaucracy, the Marshall Plan, and the National Interest (1972), The Philosopher in the City (1981), First Things (1986), Beyond the Constitution (1990), The Return of George Sutherland (1994), Natural Rights and the Right to Choose (2002), and Constitutional Illusions & Anchoring Truths: The Touchstone of the Natural Law (2010). His articles have appeared in professional journals, as well as publications with a wider general audience, such as the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, the Weekly Standard, and National Review, where he has been a contributing editor. He has been a contributor, also, to First Things, a journal that took its name from his book of that title.

Dr. Arkes founded the Committee for the American Founding at Amherst, a group of alumni and students seeking to preserve the doctrines of “natural rights” taught by the American Founders and Lincoln. With the same mission, he has preserved his connection to the Madison Program at Princeton University, and served, in 2002-03, as Visiting Professor of Public and International Affairs in the Woodrow Wilson School, and Vaughan Fellow in the Madison Program.