Brief by Finnis and George in the Dobbs Case

By "persons," did those who enacted the 14th Amendment mean human beings at all stages of development and in all conditions, including children in utero? In a Brief in the Dobbs case, Prof. John Finnis and I say yes. Prof. Aaron Tang says no. Our response:https://t.co/5IvjSFllWJ

— Robert P. George (@McCormickProf) September 21, 2021

Remember the article last week purporting to cast doubt on the "27 states" that prohibited abortion in 1868? Profs. John Finnis and @McCormickProf have penned a withering preliminary reply to Prof. @AaronTangLaw: https://t.co/Ymc0dgZhyw

— Josh Craddock (@joshjcraddock) September 21, 2021

Robert George on the Commission on Unalienable Human Rights Report

Robert George on the Commission on Unalienable Rights Report https://t.co/m7ertmoQsk via @theird

— Robert P. George (@McCormickProf) October 23, 2020

Matt Dinan Reviews Manent's Natural Law and Human Rights

Today my review of Pierre Manent's Natural Law and Human Rights is the "In this Issue" in @hedgehogreview's weekly newsletter--check it out here:https://t.co/1xN86o7GqK pic.twitter.com/I8tQ9TOHNP

— Matt Dinan (@second_sailing) September 4, 2020

Draft Report of the Commission on Unalienable Rights

The Glendon Commission (the U.S. Dept. of State Commission on Unalienable Rights, chaired by the magisterial legal scholar Mary Ann Glendon of Harvard Law School) has issued its Report. It re-roots human rights discourse in the principles of 1776 and 1948.https://t.co/dN9j2yH8Za

— Robert P. George (@McCormickProf) July 17, 2020

Unalienable Rights

The always insightful Walter Russell Mead on the Glendon Commission's report on Unalienable Rights, which was issued today: https://t.co/wt6CHliXxn via @WSJ

— Robert P. George (@McCormickProf) July 17, 2020

Thomas Behr, Social Justice and Subsidiarity

Social Justice and Subsidiarity: Luigi Taparelli and the Origins of Modern Catholic Social Thought

CWR Dispatch: Recovering the historical roots, true meaning of “social justice” by Gerald J. Russello
A review of Thomas Behr’s Social Justice and Subsidiarity, which explores the work of Luigi Taparelli, a Catholic thinker who advocated an approach to politics based in Thomistic natural law argument.

The Catholic understanding of rights is different because it is based in a different understanding of the person. We do have rights from our nature as human beings, but Catholic thought sees rights as ordered to higher goods. Our entitlement to exercise our rights is bound not just by our historical circumstances and those of our particular society, but also by conscience and “the clarity and utility of a chosen action in relation to the pursuit of the highest good. … The more directly related it is to the highest good, the stronger the claim of right. That is why certain rights are ‘inalienable’ – they are ineluctable requirements of order, of the orientation of the intellect to truth, and of the striving of persons within society for the ultimate good.”

In other words, we have rights in order to do something, not simply to exercise those rights in whatever way we subjectively may wish and desire.

Related: Historian Explores Origins of Modern Catholic Social Thought

Mary Ann Glendon on World Over

M

A Summary, of Sorts, of Tierney

Crisis Magazine: The Medieval and Catholic Roots of American Democracy by Andrew Latham

A Reason for Evangelization?

Liberals, statists, and non-believers will not care about the Christian genealogy of rights and rights talk, just as they don't really care about Roman Law or the Common Law, except insofar as it supports their ideology.

RCP: Recovering the Christian Foundations of Human Rights by Peter Berkowitz

The Last Installment of Milbank's Series

Church Life: Justice and Rights in Europe Today by John Milbank
In all the ways that I have indicated earlier in this six-part series, one can readily argue that liberalism, even Kantian liberalism, is not, after all, metaphysically agnostic. To...

The Latest Installment in Milbank's Series

Church Life: Maritain’s Postwar Compromise of Natural Law by John Milbank

The Next Two Parts of John Milbank's Series

The History of Natural Right by John Milbank
Given this revisionary account of the development of natural law (click for previous instalment in this series) in western intellectual history, how does it relate to the story of...

Burke’s Romantic Restoration of Natural Law by John Milbank

Part 2 of the Series by Milbank

First in a 6-Part Series

Church Life: A Revisionist Account of Natural Law and Natural Right by John Milbank

Benedict XVI on Human Rights

Sandro Magister: Glory To God, That There May Be Peace on Earth. A Never-Before-Published Text From Pope Benedict

Fr. Schall Reviews The Myth of Liberalism by John Safranek

Liberal Myths Have Consequences

Stuff from the Thomistic Institute in DC

Fr. Thomas Joseph White, OP's Thomistic Institute talk at Hillsdale College Kirby Center on "Life, Liberty, and the...

Posted by Thomistic Institute on Wednesday, March 30, 2016

Spinnin' those #ThomistTracks. Stay tuned in for more! #OPPower

Posted by Thomistic Institute on Tuesday, March 29, 2016