Law and the concept of happiness
There is a tendency, especially when discussing questions of law and politics in the classical, Catholic tradition, to overlook the meaning of the terms and concepts used by Aquinas and others in...
View ArticleA little more on law, happiness, and reason
It is no trick to review Thomas Aquinas’s famous definition of law from the Quaestio de Essentia Legis (ST I-II q.90). One can go through the various attributes of law before coming to Aquinas’s...
View ArticleA notable new book: Sohrab Ahmari’s “The Unbroken Thread”
I was delighted to receive a copy of Sohrab Ahmari’s new book, The Unbroken Thread. I begin with a confession: I knew people liked his conversion memoir, From Fire, By Water, but I did not read it. I...
View ArticleThe Quartodeciman Controversy
One reads St. John Henry Newman’s writings or the writings of Fr. Adrian Fortescue and one finds profound knowledge of and interest in the history of the Church, especially the Apostolic and Patristic...
View ArticleFurther thoughts on the tyranny of values
Note: Updated to reflect the actual name of the author of the piece, with apologies for the error. In a recent review of some of Leo Strauss’s books at The Public Discourse, Matthew Franck summarizes...
View ArticleAlasdair MacIntyre goes to the Laval School
It is an annual ritual for Alasdair MacIntyre to give a talk at the fall conference hosted by the Center for Ethics and Culture at the University of Notre Dame. This year was no different. The theme...
View ArticleDobbs/Schmitt
It appears that the originalist position in the Dobbs case is to remove the federal government from the debate over abortion and return the matter to the states. I have recently criticized this view...
View ArticleThe strong gods and the Ukraine
The Russian invasion of the Ukraine has preoccupied not only political leaders around the world but also the world’s media. Whether it is President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s stirring speeches from an...
View ArticlePopular sovereignty and the oath theory
In October 2021, Judge William Pryor of the Eleventh Circuit (not the Fifth) gave a speech to the Heritage Foundation. Judge Pryor is a prominent conservative judge, and he is perpetually on the list...
View ArticleThe Articles of Confederation: A Satire
It has been quite a while since I have posted here. The majority of my writing has been, as ardent readers no doubt know, at Ius & Iustitium. I would not want to neglect the readers of Semiduplex,...
View Article
