originalism

August 29, 2024

Randy E. Barnett: A Principled Commitment to the Truth

The term “Greenhouse effect” is primarily used by the environmentalist movement as an explanation for global warming, but in 1992 Judge Laurence Silberman appropriated the term and in a clever play on words linked it to Linda Greenhouse, the Pulitzer Prize–winning reporter who covered the Supreme Court at the New York Times for more than 40 years. Continue Reading...

May 07, 2024

The Heart, Not the Head: Stephen Breyer’s Approach to the Constitution

Zack Fontenot was a menace. In fact, had we both been alive in 1904, he is the last person I would have wanted anywhere near my merry-go-round because he had a history of setting them on fire. Continue Reading...

April 27, 2023

Are There Such Things as “Natural” Rights?

It is never out of season to recall James Wilson’s line that the purpose of the Constitution was not to invent new rights “by a human establishment,” but to secure and enlarge the rights we already have by nature. Continue Reading...

May 10, 2022

The Founders’ Constitution and its discontents

The term “constitutional law” is in large part a misnomer. This is rarely discussed within the guild of the legal profession and heretical in the increasingly woke precincts of the legal academy, where the field of “constitutional theory” is a cottage industry. Continue Reading...

October 29, 2020

How Amy Coney Barrett could save America

Although Amy Coney Barrett has only been a Supreme Court justice for a matter of days, she has the potential to act as the harbinger of a renewed America. She is not only potentially a new role model for working women, but she may also serve as the apostle who introduces Americans to a refreshingly positive view of their own Constitution. Continue Reading...

September 28, 2020

Everything you need to know about Amy Coney Barrett

Amy Coney Barrett’s record of judicial rulings and legal writings shows that she holds an originalist view of the Constitution, and it provides a glimpse into her opinions on such diverse issues as religious liberty, national healthcare, environmental regulations, the right to life, and the Second Amendment. Continue Reading...

April 07, 2020

Thomas Aquinas versus Adrian Vermeule

The relationship between law, morality, and liberty is one of those topics that invariably generates fierce debate. And it usually plays out in very predictable ways. On the one hand, there are some whose first instinct is to lurch for a comprehensive legal response to any number of moral evils to which legal coercion may not be the most optimal or even just response: “There ought to be a law against that!” Continue Reading...

February 10, 2017

Radio Free Acton: Judge Joe Scoville’s verdict on Judge Neil Gorsuch

On this edition of Radio Free Acton, we’re joined by Judge Joseph Scoville, former United States magistrate judge for the western district of Michigan, to review the nomination of Judge Neil Gorsuch to replace the late Justice Antonin Scalia on the United States Supreme Court. Continue Reading...

February 15, 2016

Audio: Justice Antonin Scalia ‘Interpreting the Constitution’ talk at Acton Institute (1997)

Over the weekend, we were saddened to hear of the passing of Supreme Court Associate Justice Antonin Scalia, a giant of conservative jurisprudence, stalwart champion of originalist interpretation, and as such a true friend of the Constitution. Continue Reading...

May 03, 2013

Justice Scalia Echoes Lord Acton’s Warning on Corrupting Power

Reading through Scalia Dissents: Writings of the Supreme Court’s Wittiest, Most Outspoken Justice, I came across this gem: “No government official is ‘tempted’ to place restraints upon his own freedom of action, which is why Lord Acton did not say ‘Power tends to purify.'” Continue Reading...