It is no small feat in 2020 to say something original about originalism. Lee Strang’s Originalism’s Promise: A Natural Law Account of the American Constitution (Cambridge University Press, 2019), however, is more than up to the task. The book is at once ambitious and minutely detailed (Chapter Two alone contains a jaw-dropping 546 footnotes), carefully […]
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Benjamin Franklin and the Lessons of Opportunism During Crises
Just as today debate rages over lockdowns, therapies, and vaccines to combat the COVID-19 epidemic, so too in the Boston of Benjamin Franklin’s youth Smallpox inoculation was the subject of contentious public discussion. The argument was dominated, politically if not numerically, by the proponents of inoculation. Prominent physician Zabdiel Boylston, The Mathers (Boston’s preeminent political […]
Ideological Diversity and the “Wide” History of the Civil Rights Movement
“Ideological diversity” is a controversial term. Much like free speech, it has been weaponized in our fractious political culture – and injected into our ongoing culture wars. Also referred to as “viewpoint diversity,” the concept has been deployed as a cudgel against political foes to depict them as obsessed with a version of diversity based […]
A Primer on Constitutional Rights During Crises
If the state may conscript its citizens into military service and send them to war, may it do anything short of that? This question has taken on a new relevance in the age of COVID-19. State and local shelter-in-place orders have told residents, under penalty of law, that they cannot travel, cannot assemble peacefully in […]
Socrates Doubts Zoom: The Temptation and Risk of Online Learning in the Liberal Arts
As professors and students valiantly adapt to the virtualization of campus life, administrative pressures to expand online learning will likely intensify once the COVID-19 crisis abates. Of course, we need to make the best of our sub-optimal circumstances and embrace online learning during these strange times. However, its utility during the crisis does not prove […]
