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June 28, 2018|Anthony Kennedy, Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, Obergefell v. Hodges, pantheism, Planned Parenthood v. Casey, Progressivism

The Supreme Court’s Religion Problem

by Bruce P. Frohnen|

The U.S. Supreme Court at dusk (Greg Blakeley/Shutterstock.com).
By stifling religion and the communities that form around it, the courts undermine religion's capacity to house safely our natural drive for meaning.

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.

November 18, 2015|Alexis de Tocqueville, Elinor Ostrom, Limited Government, pantheism, Religious Freedom

The Constitution’s Design for Creating Civic Virtue: Part II

by John O. McGinnis|

This is the second part of a three-part summary of a speech that I gave last weekend at the 2015 National Lawyers Convention of the Federalist Society. The first part focuses on how commerce encourages civic virtue. The second continues by discussing how limited government aids civic culture and how the Constitution helps assure that religion will be helpful rather than harmful to that culture:

Besides encouraging a commercial society, the Constitution also sharply limits government. The federal government is limited by the enumerated powers. The states’ capacity to create large, intrusive, anti-commercial government is circumscribed by the right of citizens to exit. To take just a purely hypothetical example, if my home state of Illinois exacts large taxes in favor of small groups like public sector unions, many of its citizens will leave.

Limited government creates the space and indeed the need for the kind of private associations that Alexis de Tocqueville celebrated.  Varying in size and mission, these associations may concern self-improvement, mutual aid, or social welfare. As the Nobel Prize-winning political scientist Elinor Ostrom showed, these associations can help people develop bonds of social trust and maintain long-term relations of reciprocal goodwill, which can also help sustain a free society.

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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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