CONTRIBUTORS
Advisory Committee - Project Director - Consulting Scholar - Contributing Scholars
Advisory Committee for the Project
Robert P. George, McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence and Director of the James Madison Program at Princeton University, is a world-renowned political and legal philosopher and public commentator on issues of bioethics, political ethics, and American constitutionalism. He is the author of In Defense of Natural Law, and the editor of Natural Law and Public Reason, Natural Law Theory: Contemporary Essays, and most recently the Cambridge Companion to Natural Law Jurisprudence.
Alan R. Gibson is Professor of Political Science at California State University, Chico. His research interests focus on the political thought of James Madison and the study of the American founding. He has published in Polity, History of Political Thought, The Review of Politics, and The Political Science Reviewer, and he is the author of Interpreting the Founding: Guide to the Enduring Debates over the Origins and Foundations of the American Republic and Understanding the Founding: The Crucial Questions.
James R. Stoner, Professor of Political Science at Louisiana State University, is the author of Common-Law Liberty: Rethinking American Constitutionalism and of Common Law and Liberal Theory: Coke, Hobbes, and the Origins of American Constitutionalism.
Maurizio Viroli is Professor of Government at the University of Texas (Austin), Professor of Political Communication at the University of Italian Switzerland (Lugano), and Professor Emeritus of Politics at Princeton University. His academic work focuses on the role of natural law in Western political thought, particularly in the Republican tradition. He has been a Jean Monnet Fellow at the European University Institute, a Research Fellow at Clare Hall at Cambridge University, and a Visiting Member at the Institute for Advanced Study. He received his Ph.D. from the European University Institute.
Bradford P. Wilson, Executive Director of the James Madison Program at Princeton University and President of the Association for the Study of Free Institutions, has done extensive work on the philosophical and practical principles of the American Constitution and its early modern influences. He is the author or editor of four books in American constitutional studies, including The Supreme Court and American Constitutionalism.
Thomas D. D’Andrea, Fellow of Wolfson College at Cambridge University, specializes in ancient and medieval political philosophy and ethics. He is the author of Tradition, Rationality, and Virtue: The Thought of Alasdair Macintyre.
Staff
The staff of the Witherspoon Institute are primarily responsible for the organization and administration of the project.
Contributing Scholars (presented in alphabetical order)
William B. Allen, author of the article on “American Civil Rights Movements,” is Emeritus Professor of Political Philosophy in the Department of Political Science and Emeritus Dean, James Madison College, at Michigan State University. He was the 2006-2007 Ann & Herbert W. Vaughan Visiting Fellow in the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University, and the 2008-2009 Visiting Senior Scholar in the Matthew J. Ryan Center for the Study of Free Institutions and the Public Good at Villanova University. He previously served on the National Council for the Humanities and as Chairman and Member of the United States Commission on Civil Rights. His articles have been published in the American Journal of Jurisprudence; American Political Science Review; Cardozo Journal of International and Comparative Law; College Teaching; Educational Researcher; Interpretation: A Journal of Political Philosophy; Proceedings: Statistics and Public Policy; Publius: The Journal of Federalism; The Good Society: A PEGS Journal; Rutgers Law Review; and San Diego Law Review.
Publications:
Re-Thinking Uncle Tom: The Political Philosophy of H. B. Stowe (2009)
The Personal and the Political: Three Fables by Montesquieu (2008)
George Washington: America’s First Progressive (2008)
Herman Belz, author of the article on “Abraham Lincoln,” is Professor Emeritus in the Department of History at the University of Maryland. He has served as consultant to the American Historical Association’s Constitutional History in the Schools Project, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Carter Museum and Library. He has been awarded grants from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation and the American Bar Foundation for Legal History. His first book, Reconstructing the Union: Theory and Policy during the Civil War, was awarded the Albert J. Beveridge Award by the American Historical Association in 1966. He has served on numerous University committees, was Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of History, a member of the Campus Senate Executive Committee and a member of the Graduate Council. Professor Belz was a 2001-2002 Visiting Research Scholar in the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University, and in 2005 he was appointed to the National Council on the Humanities.
Publications:
Living Constitution or Fundamental Law?: American Constitutionalism in Historical Perspective (1998)
Abraham Lincoln, Constitutionalism, and Equal Rights in the Civil War Era (1992)
American Constitution: Its Origins and Development (1983)
Walter Berns (1919–2015), author of the article on “Modern Constitutionalism,” was a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, and Professor Emeritus at Georgetown University. He also taught at the University of Chicago, the University of Toronto, Colgate University, Yale University, Louisiana State University, and John M. Olin University. As a scholar of political philosophy and constitutional law, he wrote extensively on American government and politics. He served on the National Council on the Humanities, and received the National Humanities Medal in 2005.
Publications:
Democracy and the Constitution (2006)
After the People Vote (2004)
Making Patriots (2001)
Daryl Charles, author of the article on “The Protestant Reformers,” is a faculty member of the Chattanooga Fellows Program and an Affiliated Scholar of the John Jay Institute. Having previously taught at Taylor University, Union University and Bryan College, Dr. Charles served as visiting fellow, Institute for Faith and Learning, Baylor University, 2003–2004; William E. Simon Visiting Fellow in Religion and Public Life, James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions, Department of Politics, Princeton University, 2007–2008; and senior fellow, Center for Politics and Religion, Union University, 2008–2009. Dr. Charles’s work focuses on a wide range of themes that concern the intersection of faith and culture, including criminal justice ethics, religion in the public sphere, bioethics, war and peace and humanitarian intervention, and natural law.
Publications:
Natural Law and Religious Freedom: The Role of Moral First Things in Grounding and Protecting the First Freedom (2017)
The Just War Tradition: An Introduction (2012, with David D. Corey)
Thriving in Babylon (2011, with David B. Capes)
Retrieving the Natural Law: A Return to Moral First Things (2008)
Faithful to the End (2007)
Between Pacifism and Jihad (2005)
Thomas D. D’Andrea, author of the article on “Thomas Aquinas” and consulting scholar for the Natural Law, Natural Rights, and American Constitutionalism Online Project, is a Fellow at Wolfson College, Cambridge. In 2001 he was a Visiting Fellow at the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University. He has lectured in the university’s Department of Politics and in the Department of Moral Philosophy at the University of St. Andrews. Professor D’Andrea’s research interests include the moral and political thought of the Aristotelian tradition. He has published articles and reviews on ancient philosophy, medieval philosophy, ethics, and the philosophy of religion. He received his Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of Notre Dame.
Publications:
Tradition, Rationality, and Virtue: The Thought of Alasdair Macintyre (2006)
John Dinan, author of the article on “American Constitutions: Constitution-Making in the Founding Era,” is Professor of Political Science at Wake Forest University, and was the 2009-2010 William E. Simon Visiting Fellow at the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University. His research focuses on federalism, state constitutionalism, and American political development. Professor Dinan writes the annual review of “State Constitutional Developments” for The Book of the States, and serves as editor of the “Annual Review of American Federalism” issue of Publius: The Journal of Federalism. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Virginia.
Publications:
State Constitutional Politics: Governing by Amendment in the American States (2018)
The American State Constitutional Tradition (2009)
Keeping the People’s Liberties: Legislators, Citizens, and Judges as Guardians of Rights (1998)
The Virginia State Constitution: A Reference Guide (Reference Guides State Constitutions of the United States (2005)
Robert Faulkner, author of the article on “Richard Hooker,” is Professor of Political Science at Boston College. He teaches and writes chiefly about modern political philosophy and American political and legal thought. Faulkner was a Marshall Scholar at Oxford and has held fellowships from the Ford, Mellon, Earhart, and Bradley foundations and the National Endowment for the Humanities. He is a past president of the New England Political Science Association.
Publications:
The Case for Greatness: Honorable Ambition and Its Critics (2007)
Francis Bacon and the Project of Progress (1993)
Richard Hooker and the Politics of a Christian England (1981)
The Jurisprudence of John Marshall (1968)
Steven Forde, author of the article on “John Locke,” is Professor of Political Science at the University of North Texas. He has published work on classical and modern political philosophy, including the American Founding. He has written numerous essays on the thought of Benjamin Franklin, including the chapter on Franklin in the recent volume, History of American Political Thought. He received his Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Toronto.
Publications:
The Ambition to Rule: Alcibiades and the Politics of Imperialism in Thucydides (1989)
Locke, Science, and Politics (2014)
“What Does Locke Expect Us to Know?” (Review of Politics, 2006)
“Natural Law, Theology, and Morality in Locke” (American Journal of Political Science, 2001)
Samuel Gregg, author of the article on “The Law of Nations,” is Director of Research at the Acton Institute and a consultant for Oxford Analytica Ltd. He has written numerous books and articles on political economy, economic history, ethics in finance, and natural law theory. His book, The Commercial Society, received the Templeton Enterprise Award. He has written opinion-pieces in a variety of newspapers, including the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Times, and Business Review Weekly. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and a Member of the Mont Pèlerin Society, the Philadelphia Society, and the Royal Economic Society. He received his Ph.D. in moral philosophy from the University of Oxford.
Publications:
For God and Profit: How Banking and Finance Can Serve the Common Good (2016)
Wilhelm Röpke’s Political Economy (2010)
The Commercial Society (2007)
On Ordered Liberty (2003)
Economic Thinking for the Theologically Minded (2001)
Morality, Law, and Public Policy (2000)
Robert P. Kraynak, author of the article on “Thomas Hobbes,” is Professor of Political Science at Colgate University and Director of the Center for Freedom & Western Civilization. He teaches courses on political philosophy, particularly on American political thought, the history of Western political philosophy, natural law, religion and politics, and conservative political thought. He has published books on political philosophy and has contributed to Human Dignity and Bioethics, published by the President’s Council on Bioethics (2008). He received his Ph.D. in Government from Harvard University.
Publications:
History and Modernity in the Thought of Thomas Hobbes (1990)
Christian Faith and Modern Democracy (2001)
In Defense of Human Dignity, edited with Glenn Tinder (2003)
Alan M. Levine, co-author of the article on “Enlightenment Critics of the Natural Law Tradition,” is Associate Professor of Political Theory in the Department of Government at American University and the founding director of the Political Theory Institute. His scholarship focuses on the theoretical principles of the United States and the concept of “America” in the history of Western political thought. He founded the Washington, D.C. Political Theory Colloquium, and has been a Fellow at the Institute of United States Studies, School of Advanced Study, at the University of London. He has also held fellowships at Stanford’s Hoover Institute, Princeton University’s James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Foundation for the Defense of Democracy. He received his Ph.D. from Harvard University.
Publications:
Sensual Philosophy: Toleration, Skepticism, and Montaigne’s Politics of the Self (2001)
Early Modern Skepticism and the Origins of Toleration (1999)
Bradley Lewis, author of the article on “Plato,” is Associate Professor in the School of Philosophy at The Catholic University of America, and serves as Associate Editor of the American Journal of Jurisprudence and the Journal of Law, Philosophy, and Culture. His focus is ancient, political, and legal philosophy and jurisprudence. He was co-recipient of a John Templeton Foundation Freedom Project Grant, and has served on the Witherspoon Institute’s Task Force on Conscience Protection, as well as the Editorial Board of Debate Actual: Revista de religion y vida pública. He received his Ph.D. in Government and International Studies from the University of Notre Dame.
Publications:
“Gods for the City and Beyond: Civil Religion in Plato’s Laws.” (in Civil Religion in Political Thought: Its Perennial Questions and Enduring Relevance in North America, 2010)
“Natural Right and the Problem of Public Reason.” (in Natural Moral Law in Contemporary Society, 2010)
“The Common Good against the Modern State? On MacIntyre’s Political Philosophy.” (Josephinum Journal of Theology, 2009)
““Reason Striving to Become Law”: Nature and Law in Plato’s Laws.” (American Journal of Jurisprudence, 2009)
Paul Moreno, author of the article on the “US Supreme Court,” is Associate Professor of History at Hillsdale College, where he serves as Dean of Social Sciences and holds the William and Berniece Grewcock Chair in Constitutional History. He has published in a variety of journals, including the Law and History Review, the Journal of Southern History, and the Journal of Policy History, and has contributed to The Encyclopedia of Labor and Working-Class History, and The Heritage Guide to the Constitution. He is a Senior Fellow at the Kirby Center, and has served as a John M. Olin Junior Faculty Fellow and as a Fellow the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University. He received his Ph.D. in History from the University of Maryland at College Park.
Publications:
The Bureaucrat Kings: The Origins and Underpinnings of America’s Bureaucratic State (2016)
The American State from the Civil War to the New Deal: The Twilight of Constitutionalism and the Triumph of Progressivism (2013)
The Verdict of History: The History of Michigan Jurisprudence Through Its Significant Supreme Court Cases (2009)
Black Americans and Organized Labor: A New History (2007)
From Direct Action to Affirmative Action: Fair Employment Law and Policy in America (1999)
James B. Murphy, author of the article on “Legal Positivism,” is Professor in the Department of Government at Dartmouth College, where he is Faculty Director of the Daniel Webster Program. His research focuses on ancient and medieval political and legal philosophy, philosophy of education, and ethics. He has been the recipient of a variety of grants, including the Manhattan Institute Veritas Fund Grant and the Hopkins Institute Grant. He received his Ph.D. in Philosophy and Political Science from Yale University.
Publications:
The Nature of Customary Law: Legal, Historical and Philosophical Perspectives (2007)
The Philosophy of Positive Law: Foundations of Jurisprudence (2007)
The Moral Economy of Labor: Aristotelian Themes in Economic Theory (1993)
Walter Nicgorski, author of the article on “Cicero,” is Concurrent Professor of Political Science, and is Professor Emeritus in the Program of Liberal Studies at the University of Notre Dame. He is the former editor of The Review of Politics. Professor Nicgorski has held research fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities and directed NEH summer seminars on Cicero’s texts. His research interests include the political thought of Cicero and of the American founding, the theory and practice of moral and liberal education, and the impact of Christianity on contemporary democratic theory. His articles on Cicero, liberal and character education, the American Founding, Leo Strauss, and Allan Bloom have appeared in journals such as Political Theory, Interpretation, and the Political Science Reviewer. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago.
Publications:
Cicero’s Skepticism and His Recovery of Political Philosophy (2016)
Cicero’s Practical Philosophy (2012)
“Allan Bloom: Strauss, Socrates and Liberal Education,” (in The Influence of Leo Strauss on the Study of American Regime, 1999)
Leo Strauss: Political Philosopher and Jewish Thinker (co-editor, 1994)
An Almost Chosen People: The Moral Aspirations of Americans (co-editor,)
Thomas L. Pangle, author of the article on “The Bill of Rights,” holds the Joe R. Long Chair in Democratic Studies in the Department of Government at the University of Texas at Austin. His research focuses on ancient political philosophy, the American Founding, and the influence of the philosophies of Locke and Montesquieu on the American Founding. He has taught at Yale University, the University of Toronto, the University of Chicago, and the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales. He is a Fellow at the Royal Society of Canada, and has been awarded Guggenheim, Carl Friedrich von Siemens, and four National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowships. He received his Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Chicago.
Publications:
Aristotle’s Teaching in the Politics (2013)
The Theological Basis of Liberal Modernity in Montesquieu’s “Spirit of the Laws” (2010)
The Great Debate: Advocates and Opponents of the American Constitution (2007)
Leo Strauss: An Introduction to his Thought and Intellectual Legacy (2006)
Political Philosophy and the God of Abraham (2003)
Michael Pakaluk, author of the article on “Aristotle,” is Associate Dean and Ordinary Professor at the Busch School of Business and Economics at the Catholic University of America. He formerly taught at Ave Maria University, Clark University, and the Institute for the Psychological Sciences. He has been influential in the resurgence of philosophical interest in the role of friendship in ethics and political philosophy. He served as Director of the Boston Area Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy, and is a Founding Member of the American Public Philosophy Institute. He has served as a Visiting Professor at Brown University, University of St. Andrews, Cambridge University, and Harvard University. He received his Ph.D. in Philosophy from Harvard University, where he studied under W.V. Quine and John Rawls.
Publications:
Other Selves: Philosophers on Friendship (1991)
The Clarendon Aristotle Volume on Nicomachean Ethics (1999)
Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics: An Introduction (2005)
Human Action and Moral Psychology in Aristotle (with Giles Pearson, 2011)
Ronald J. Pestritto, author of the article on “American Progressivism,” holds the Charles and Lucia Shipley Chair in American Constitution at Hillsdale College, where he is Associate Professor of Political Science and Dean of the Graduate School. His scholarly interests include political philosophy, American political thought, and American politics. He is a Senior Fellow at the the Kirby Center and at the Claremont Institute. He has been awarded three Earhart Foundation Fellowship Research Grants, as well as the John M. Olin Faculty Fellowship. He received his Ph.D. from Claremont Graduate School.
Publications:
Woodrow Wilson and the Roots of Modern Liberalism (2005)
Modern America and the Legacy of the Founding (2007)
Founding the Criminal Law: Punishment and Political Thought in the Origins of America (2000)
Paul A. Rahe, author of the article on “Montesquieu,” is Professor of History and Political Science at Hillsdale College where he holds the Charles O. Lee and Louise K. Lee Chair in the Western Heritage. Previously, he has taught at Cornell University, Franklin and Marshall College, and the University of Tulsa. Professor Rahe’s scholarly interests include the origin and evolution of self-government within the West. His works on political thought have appeared in numerous scholarly journals and he has held research fellowships at the Center for Hellenic Study, the National Humanities Center, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C., Clare College at Cambridge University, All Souls College at Oxford University, and the American Academy in Berlin. He was a Rhodes Scholar at Wadham College, Oxford and completed his Ph.D. in ancient history at Yale University.
Publications:
Republics Ancient and Modern: Classical Republicanism and the American Revolution (1992)
Against Throne and Altar: Machiavelli and Political Theory under the English Republic (2008)
Montesquieu and the Logic of Liberty: War, Religion, Commerce, Climate, Terrain, Technology, Uneasiness of Mind, the Spirit of Political Vigilance and the Foundations of the Modern Republic (2009)
Soft Despotism, Democracy’s Drift: Montesquieu, Rousseau, and Tocqueville and the Modern Prospect (2009)
The Spartan Regime: Its Character, Origins, and Grand Strategy (2016)
Daniel N. Robinson, author of the article on “James Wilson and the Influence of the Scottish Enlightenment,” is a member of the Philosophy Faculty at Oxford University and is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Georgetown University. His research interests include philosophy of mind, philosophy of psychology, and philosophy of law. He is a Senior Fellow of the Witherspoon Institute, and is on the Board of the Consulting Scholars for Princeton University’s James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions. In 2001, the Division of History of Psychology of the American Psychological Association awarded him the Lifetime Achievement Award, and he has also received the Distinguished Contribution Award from the Division of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology of the American Psychology Association.
Publications:
“Do the People of the United States form a nation? James Wilson’s theory of rights”. International Journal of Constitutional Law, (2010) Vol. 8, No. 2, pp. 287–297
“The Scottish Enlightenment and the American Founding.” The Monist, (2007), Vol. 90 (2)
Paul E. Sigmund (1929–2014), author of the article on “Late Medieval Transformations of Natural Law,” was Professor of Politics at Princeton University. He specialized in Chilean politics, religion and politics, and the history of political theory, especially in the 13th-17th centuries. In addition to the books he authored on these topics, he also translated a variety of works, including St. Thomas Aquinas on Ethics and Politics. He received Fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, and was a Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center for Scholars and the Institute for Advanced Study. He received his Ph.D. from Harvard University. Professor Sigmund died in 2014.
Publications:
Religious Freedom and Evangelization in Latin America: The Challenge of Pluralism (2009)
The Selected Political Writings of John Locke (2005)
St. Thomas Aquinas on Politics and Ethics (1987)
Natural Law in Political Thought (1981)
Darren M. Staloff, co-author of the article on “Enlightenment Critics of the Natural Law Tradition,” is Professor of History at the City College of New York and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. In addition to publishing a variety of papers and reviews on early American history, he is also the author of The Politics of Enlightenment: Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, and John Adams and the Founding of the American Republic, and The Making of an American Thinking Class: Intellectuals and Intelligentsia in Puritan Massachusetts. He has received the National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship, the President’s Fellowship at Columbia University, and was the Harry J. Carman Scholar at Columbia University. Prior to working at City College, he was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Institute for Early American History and Culture, and worked as a preceptor of Contemporary Civilization at Columbia University, where he received his Ph.D.
Publications:
The Politics of Enlightenment: Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, and John Adams and the Founding of the American Republic (2007)
The Making of an American Thinking Class: Intellectuals and Intelligentsia in Puritan Massachusetts (1998)
James R. Stoner, author of the articles on “The Declaration of Independence” and “Common Law,” is Professor of Political Science at Louisiana State University, where he chairs the Department of Political Science. His teaching and research interests include political theory, English common law, and American constitutionalism. He has twice served as a Visiting Fellow at the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University, and in 2013-2014 he was the James Madison Program’s Garwood Visiting Professor. From 2002-2006, he served on the National Council on the Humanities, and in 2009, he was named a Senior Fellow of the Witherspoon Institute. He received his Ph.D. from Harvard University.
Publications:
The Thriving Society: On the Social Conditions of Human Flourishing (edited with Harold James, 2015)
Rethinking Business Management: Examining the Foundations of Business Education (co-authored with Samuel Gregg, 2008)
Common-Law Liberty: Rethinking American Constitutionalism (2003)
Common Law and Liberal Theory: Coke, Hobbes, and the Origins of American Constitutionalism (1992)
Christopher O. Tollefsen, author of the article on “New Natural Law Theory,” is Professor of Philosophy at the University of South Carolina. His areas of specialization include moral philosophy and practical ethics. His current research interests include natural law ethics, liberal perfectionism, medical ethics, the ethics and politics of inquiry, philosophical embryology, the nature of human action, end of life issues, and ethics and education. He has published extensively in academic journals on topics of bioethics, meta-ethics, and the New Natural Law Theory. He is a Senior Fellow at the Witherspoon Institute. He received his Ph.D. in Philosophy from Emory University.
Publications:
Lying and Christian Ethics (2017)
Embryo: A Defense of Human Life (2008)
Biomedical Research and Beyond: Expanding the Ethics of Inquiry (2007)
Maurizio Viroli, author of the article on “Machiavelli, Guicciardini, and Raison d’Etat,” is Professor of Government at the University of Texas (Austin), Professor of Political Communication at the University of Italian Switzerland (Lugano), and Professor Emeritus of Politics at Princeton University. His academic work focuses on the role of natural law in Western political thought, particularly in the Republican tradition. He has been a Jean Monnet Fellow at the European University Institute, a Research Fellow at Clare Hall at Cambridge University, and a Visiting Member at the Institute for Advanced Study. He received his Ph.D. from the European University Institute.
Publications:
Redeeming The Prince: The Meaning of Machiavelli’s Masterpiece (2013)
Machiavelli’s God (2010)
Niccolo’s Smile: A Biography of Machiavelli (2000)
Jean Jacques Rousseau and the Well-Ordered Society (1988)
Lee Ward, author of the article on “Colonial Roots of American Constitutionalism,” is Alpha Sigma Nu Distinguished Associate Professor at Campion College at the University of Regina, where he teaches in the Department of Political Science. He specializes in the history of political philosophy, early-modern and American political thought, and liberal constitutional theory. He has written on John Locke, Aristotle, Montesquieu and Algernon Sidney, publishing articles in a variety of journals, including The Journal of Moral Philosophy, and the American Journal of Political Science. Before working at the University of Regina, he taught at Kenyon College, and was the Bradley Post-doctoral Fellow in the Program in Constitutional Government at Harvard University. He received his Ph.D. from Fordham University.
Publications:
Modern Democracy and the Theological-Political Problem in Spinoza, Rousseau, and Jefferson (2014)
John Locke and Modern Life (2010)
The Politics of Liberty in England and Revolutionary America (Cambridge University Press, 2004)
“A Note on a Note on Locke’s ‘great art of government.’” (Canadian Journal of Political Science, 2009.)
“Montesquieu on Federalism and Anglo-Gothic Constitutionalism.” (Publius: The Journal of Federalism, 2007.)
Bradley C. S. Watson, author of the articles on “Social Darwinism” and “Oliver Wendell Holmes,” is Professor and Chairperson of the Department of Politics at St. Vincent College in Pennsylvania, where he holds the Philip M. McKenna Chair in American and Western Political Thought, and is Co-Executive Director of the Center for Political and Economic Thought. He is also Senior Scholar at the Intercollegiate Studies Institute and a fellow of the Claremont Institute. He has held visiting faculty appointments at Princeton University and Claremont McKenna College and has authored or edited many books, including Living Constitution, Dying Faith: Progressivism and the New Science of Jurisprudence, Civil Rights and the Paradox of Liberal Democracy, Ourselves and our Posterity: Essays in Constitutional Originalism, and The Idea of the American University. He has received fellowships from numerous national and international organizations, including the Social Philosophy and Policy Center, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Earhart Foundation, the Heritage Foundation, the John M. Olin Foundation, the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, and the John Templeton Foundation. He was educated in Canada, Belgium, and the United States, and holds advanced degrees in law, philosophy, and political science.
Publications:
Living Constitution, Dying Faith: Progressivism and the New Science of Jurisprudence (2009)
Civil Rights and the Paradox of Liberal Democracy (1999)
Christopher Wolfe, author of the article on “John Rawls,” is Professor of Politics at the University of Dallas and Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Marquette University. He is also Co-Director of the Thomas International Center in Raleigh-Durham NC. He graduated summa cum laude from Notre Dame in 1971 with a major in government and went on to study political philosophy at Boston College, receiving his Ph.D. in 1978. Dr. Wolfe’s main area of research and teaching for two decades was Constitutional Law. In his later research and writing, he shifted back to political theory, with studies of natural law and liberalism. Since 1989, Dr. Wolfe has been President of the American Public Philosophy Institute, a group of scholars from various disciplines that brings natural law theory to bear on contemporary scholarly and public issues.
Publications:
Natural Law Liberalism (2006)
That Eminent Tribunal: Judicial Supremacy and the Constitution (2004)
Natural Law and Public Reason (2000)
The Family, Civil Society, and the State (1998)
Liberalism at the Crossroads: An Introduction to Contemporary Liberal Political Theory and Its Critics (1994)
Michael Zuckert, author of the articles on “Post-Civil War Amendments” and “Radical Whigs and Natural Rights,” is the Nancy Reeves Dreux Professor and Department Chair of Political Science at the University of Notre Dame. He teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in political philosophy and theory, American political thought, American constitutional law, American constitutional history, and philosophy of law. Professor Zuckert has published extensively on a variety of topics, including George Orwell, Plato, Shakespeare, and contemporary liberal theory. He is currently finishing a book called Completing the Constitution: The Post-Civil War Amendments and is co-authoring another book on Machiavelli and Shakespeare. Zuckert has received grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Woodrow Wilson Center, Earhart Foundation and NSF, and has taught at Carleton College, Cornell University, Claremont Men’s College, Fordham University, the University of Minnesota, the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, and the University of Chicago. He is currently head of the new Tocqueville Center for the Study of Religion in American Public Life. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago.
Publications:
Natural Rights and the New Republicanism (1994)
The Natural Rights Republic (1997)
Launching Liberalism: John Locke and the Liberal Tradition (2002)
Leo Strauss and the Problem of Political Philosophy (2014)