Originalism Is Not Enough
Many judges simply begin with their own sense of what the right outcome should be and use constitutional clauses or commentaries as cover for their judgments.
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.
Articles by Hadley Arkes
Angelo Maria Codevilla (1943–2021)
In memory of our beloved colleague, Angelo Codevilla.
Conservatives and Freedom of Speech
Is relativism the new default position?
Jack Phillips Has His Day in Court
And it's a good one.
An Appeal to Paul Ryan
What's at stake in 2016.
The Self-Made Trap
Hadley Arkes looks at the conservative case against gay marriage.
Twin Barbarisms
Justin Dyer looks at the similarities in the constitutional arguments for the right to own slaves and abortion.
When a Man Loves a Woman
A review of What Is Marriage?: Man and Woman: A Defense, by Robert George, Ryan Anderson, and Sherif Girgis
A Natural Law Manifesto
With replies by David F. Forte and Michael M. Uhlmann.
The Mirage of Enumerated Powers
Limited government rests ultimately on moral reasoning.
Civil Rights and the Conservative Soul
What the Right got wrong—and right.
Building Democracy
A review of Architecture of Democracy, by Allan Greenberg
The Constitution and Mr. Bush
Why the president cannot leave constitutional interpretation to the courts.
On Privacy
Hadley Arkes debates the controversy of the right to privacy and the right to an abortion
The Rights and Wrongs of Alan Dershowitz
Dershowitz's secular theory of the origin of rights.
The Unbearable Lightness of Being Alan Wolfe
At the end of this book, we know more about the logic of morals but considerably less about the moral condition of the American people.