While the rule of law is an essential public good, the actual number and extent of laws also are important factors in determining whether there will be liberty—and, indeed, the rule of law itself. Moreover, as too much law undermines freedom and its own proper character, it also tears apart the very fabric of [...]
Presidents of both parties, and houses of Congress controlled by both parties, have for decades tolerated and thus implicitly encouraged and provided an incentive for illegal immigration. What has been sacrificed along the way is the rule of law. Will the federal judiciary not only change central provisions of American immigration statutory law pertaining [...]
While Gosnell tells the true story of a squalid, back-street abortion mill, we are also reminded by the film that the majority of baby murders are committed legally by nice, middle-class people who are well-connected, well-off, well-educated, well-spoken, and well-funded... A friend once commented about Christian films, “For ‘Christian’ read ‘inferior’.” His critique was all [...]
In the case of the now-deceased toddler, Alfie Evans, the British government, through its Royal College of Pediatrics and its courts, had legal authority. Alfie had legal “interests,” which the government defined in his case, but he did not have any “rights.” Alfie’s parents only had a right to be heard; they had no substantive rights [...]
If a reform produces unintended consequences of a troubling sort, succeeding generations of reformers will make use of those consequences not to undo the original reform, but rather to call for new action that requires an ever-larger federal government… All reforms are notorious for their unintended consequences; liberal reforms are noteworthy for something that [...]
Despite their differing political views, the conservative Edmund Burke and the radical Daniel O’Connell played major roles in combatting the suppression of Catholics in eighteenth-century Ireland… In the past couple of decades, the Catholic Church has fallen upon bad times in an Ireland whose overwhelmingly Catholic population had been among the most observant in [...]
I tried to explain to the police officer that I hadn’t said anything to him, but the uproar around us was immense, but I could see the fear and the fury in his eyes and as his club came within an inch of my face, I sensibly turned silent… Like many others, I have [...]
The federal judiciary is often the most dangerous branch precisely because it is considered to be the least dangerous one… Today’s offering in our Timeless Essay series affords readers the opportunity to join Allen Porter Mendenhall as he discusses the proper and actual extent of the federal judiciary as exemplified in the powers of [...]
Having flouted and subverted the rule of law for decades, the radical elements of the progressive left in the United States now face the inevitable consequence of their concerted activity… “Donald Trump Could Threaten U.S. Rule of Law, Scholars Say.” So declared an ominous headline in the New York Times during the Republican primary campaign [...]
Natural law jurisprudence seems to be our only salvation—the only way to re-establish the proper hierarchy of laws, the only way to put the prudence back in American jurisprudence… The First Grace: Rediscovering the Natural Law in a Post-Christian World, by Russell Hittinger (ISI Books, 2002) As a professor of political science, I am [...]
The slow disintegration of our legal system will continue apace until and unless judges, in particular, cease acting as if the legal system they serve either does not need or does not deserve their active support… Americans’ attitudes toward lawyers and the legal system are filled with ironies. We complain that lawyers are money-grubbing [...]
The cause of modern American disunity can be found in today’s twisted notions of freedom… In his masterwork, The City of God, Saint Augustine offers a definition of a people that can shed some light on why we are so fragmented today. He states that a people is “a gathered multitude of rational beings [...]
Textualism is a compromise, or rather a lowest common denominator, that can allow for a renewal of the rule of law. Still, it rests on a great loss—that of the common mind of our people… Neil Gorsuch, President Trump’s nominee to fill late Justice Antonin Scalia’s spot on the Supreme Court, might follow other [...]
How fallen we are, from Dante and Beatrice to John Hinckley and Jodie Foster. “We did the best job with what we had to work with,” the twenty-two-year-old jury foreman said after the unanimous decision that Hinckley was innocent by reason of insanity. And surely that is a conclusion we must come to, examining [...]