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February 20, 2018|Environmentalists, Establishment Clause, Human Rights, pantheism, Religion

Religion Currently Poses Less Danger to Democracy Than Other Social Movements

by John O. McGinnis|

Stone relief depicting Wilberforce and the freedom from slavery in Strasbourg, France (Philip Bird LRPS CPAGB / Shutterstock.com).
Democracies need all the help they can get, including religion, to muster the better angels of ourselves for the sacrifice that sustains decent politics.

January 24, 2018|Human Rights, Iran, Pope John Paul II, Vaclav Havel

Being Realistic—but Hopeful—about Iran

by Luma Simms|

March in support of Iranian protesters, January 6, 2018. livethemoment / Shutterstock.com
The road to liberty in Iran, and throughout the Middle East, is through the moral power of recognizing human dignity.

May 22, 2017|Aurel Kolnai, Human Rights, John M. Rist, Regensburg Address, What Is Truth?

Contesting the Re-Primitivism of the West

by Graham McAleer|

Does Catholicism expand civilization? Thinking of Thomas Aquinas, Gian Lorenzo Bernini, and Gregor Johann Mendel, and the Gothic, Baroque, and Rococo, the answer seems an obvious “yes.”  However, it is also undoubtedly true that a snap survey on any street in the West would find a decent number of respondents either angered by the suggestion or just clueless. John M. Rist thinks the answer certainly “yes.” What’s more, he thinks that re-primitivism (to borrow a term Aurel Kolnai used in his 1938 War Against the West) threatens our civilization, and only Catholicism has the theoretical heft to ward it off. It is…

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September 1, 2016|Afghanistan War, Bill Clinton, collapse of the Soviet Union, George H. W. Bush, George W. Bush, Human Rights, Iraq War, Michael Mandelbaum, Mission Failure, Most Favored Nation status

Squandering the Post-Cold War Peace Dividend

by William Anthony Hay|

US Marines withdraw from the Camp Bastion-Leatherneck complex at Lashkar Gah in Helmand province on October 26, 2014. (WAKIL KOHSAR/AFP/Getty Images)

During the 1990s, victory in the Cold War seemed more than just a triumph over the Soviet Union.

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September 26, 2014|Customary International Law, Eleanor Roosevelt, FDR, Human Rights, International Law, United Nations

The Truth is Marching On

by Robert J. Delahunty|

Conference leaders at Church services during the Atlantic Charter Conference.

The universal human rights régime, under which we live, originated in response to the racial and other atrocities committed by Nazi Germany and its allies. The architects of the post-War system intended to institutionalize the liberal and egalitarian vision that had animated the Allied war effort. Drawing from the constitutional practices of liberal Western societies, they placed the rights-bearing individual at the center of the new global order.  They thus refashioned the pre-War states system in four major ways.

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June 28, 2012|Germany, Human Rights, Religious Liberty

Can German Law Professor Holm Putzke really be such a Putzke?

by David Conway|

A  medical doctor was recently acquitted of an assault charge by a German court for having circumcised a four-year old boy at the behest of his two Muslim parents.

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June 4, 2012|

From the Nation State to the New Church

by Daniel McCarthy|

In response to: Prospects for the Democratic Nation-State: What State Are We In?

Mankind is not easily rid of theology once it gets the bug. The nation-state tried to erase the distinction between earthly power and absolute right, but the attempt failed, with the result that the modern nation-state, its professed secularism notwithstanding, is once more coming under the tutelage of a clerisy. Almost since its beginning the nation-state has implied self-government in matters spiritual as well as temporal. It aspired to be an integral unit within whose borders a people were fully sovereign, answerable only to God—and perhaps not even to God, for what power could gainsay the people’s interpretation of His commands?…

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More Responses

Loving the Democratic State Moderately

by Aurelian Craiutu

Ralph Hancock begins his interesting essay[i] be reminding us that, despite its internal contradictions and failures, the modern state has become the only conceivable political form in our post-modern world. This should be puzzling since the record is far from being a convincing successful story. At its best, the modern state has allowed us to…

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February 28, 2012|Human Rights, International Law

Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum

by Richard M. Reinsch II|

Point of Law is hosting a debate between Professor Julian Ku of Hofstra Law School and Professor David Weissbrodt, the Regents Professor and Fredrikson & Byron Professor of Law at the University of Minnesota Law School, that is focused on the extent to which companies can be sued by foreigners in U.S. courts for alleged human rights abuses abroad, at issue in the Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum (link no longer available) case currently before the Supreme Court. Arguments are scheduled to be heard before the Supreme Court tomorrow.

Book Reviews

A Mirror of the 20th-Century Congress

by Joseph Postell

Wright undermined the very basis of his local popularity—the decentralized nature of the House—by supporting reforms that gave power to the party leaders.

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The Graces of Flannery O'Connor

by Henry T. Edmondson III

O'Connor's correspondence is a goldmine of piercing insight and startling reflections on everything from literature to philosophy to raising peacocks.

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Liberty Classics

Rereading Politica in the Post-Liberal Moment

by Glenn A. Moots

Althusius offers a rich constitutionalism that empowers persons to thrive alongside one another in deliberate communities.

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James Fenimore Cooper and the American Experiment

by Melissa Matthes

In The American Democrat, James Fenimore Cooper defended democracy against both mob rule and majority tyranny.

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Podcasts

Stuck With Decadence

A discussion with Ross Douthat

Ross Douthat discusses with Richard Reinsch his new book The Decadent Society.

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Can the Postmodern Natural Law Remedy Our Failing Humanism?

A discussion with Graham McAleer

Graham McAleer discusses how postmodern natural law can help us think more coherently about human beings and our actions.

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Did the Civil Rights Constitution Distort American Politics?

A discussion with Christopher Caldwell

Christopher Caldwell discusses his new book, The Age of Entitlement.

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America, Land of Deformed Institutions

A discussion with Yuval Levin

Yuval Levin pinpoints that American alienation and anger emerges from our weak political, social, and religious institutions.

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About

Law & Liberty’s focus is on the classical liberal tradition of law and political thought and how it shapes a society of free and responsible persons. This site brings together serious debate, commentary, essays, book reviews, interviews, and educational material in a commitment to the first principles of law in a free society. Law & Liberty considers a range of foundational and contemporary legal issues, legal philosophy, and pedagogy.

The opinions expressed on Law & Liberty are solely those of the contributors to the site and do not reflect the opinions of Liberty Fund.
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