Throughout the Middle Ages, to cherish and respect sanctuary was seen as the sign of a pious and powerful ruler. This was not some arbitrary custom, but an extension of the love and logic of the family into the world at large. Now if sanctuary seems unreasonable to moderns, it cannot be because we think [...]
The classic television show "Columbo," like the great novel "Crime and Punishment," is a classic, and rightfully so, because it too penetrates to the heart of a modern heresy and exposes it for the lie that it is. This is the Nietzschean idea of the "ubermensch": the superman who can transcend ordinary law. Selecting a [...]
If we could explain to him what executive orders of a President mean today and what jurisdiction the district courts now have, what would the great John Marshall have said about the Supreme Court’s opinion limiting the power of the district judges to issue universal or nationwide injunctions? Introduction In June, the United States Supreme [...]
If anything saves our constitutional republic at this stage it will be Americans’ sheer unruliness, our unwillingness to sit still and be told what to do by people convinced that their scores on entrance exams (or, perhaps, on the squash court) entitle them to organize our lives for us. Law & Leviathan: Redeeming the Administrative [...]
The resort to violence has become the characteristic American response to a world that seems to many to lie beyond their control. Almost from the beginning, violence wrote itself into the American story. Violence seems now to be inscribing itself onto the American soul. Although the story has disappeared from the news cycle, Luigi Mangione’s [...]
With his bold pronouncement in the Dred Scott decision that Congress had no jurisdiction over the territories, Chief Justice Roger B. Taney hoped to preempt all political discussion and debate. But he was sadly disappointed, for his majority opinion itself became the focus of a new, and ever more vicious, round of political battles as [...]
There is one aspect of the immigration debate that most liberals do not like to discuss. Recognizing a right for anyone to flee misfortune, liberals invite them to pour over the border, which most do illegally. However, they refuse to look at the reasons behind the growing migrant stream and seek to stop it. Dealing [...]
As long as the great powers accept the moral duty of changing an unjust status quo even if it means sacrifice to them, just so long will there be peace. The State in Catholic Thought, by Heinrich A. Rommen, introduction by Bruce Frohnen (Cluny Media, 770 pages) There is no possible evasion of the general principle that [...]
When the law reckons with the matter of life, it inevitably reckons with its own foundation and its own essence. When we attempt to define life in law, in other words, we are necessarily, though implicitly, defining law in an analogous sense at the same time. The background assumption of my brief essay is that [...]
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 sophists [...]
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 the [...]
In acknowledgement of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, I wish to raise the question, based on Dr. King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” as to when, if ever, as well as to what extent, it is appropriate to defy the rule of law. On The Imaginative Conservative Winston Elliott raised the question “When is a Change [...]
The Supreme Court's unanimous decision in the case of Shurtleff v. Boston is in line with the Court’s other recent rulings overturning attempts by state and local government to restrict religious freedom. In Boston, a gay pride flag was allowed to be run up the flagpole of city hall, but the flag of a Christian [...]
The principal basis of the reparations, systemic racism, and Black Lives Matter policy agenda has been the planned and deliberate ignoring of the federal constitution (“any person”) and federal civil rights laws (“no person”), both of which create and guarantee the rights of individuals against racial discrimination by private and public institutions and programs. Now, [...]