JWI Presents: Anchoring Truths Podcast

Join JWI Deputy Director Garrett Snedeker and Intern Catherine Hickam for a discussion with Prof. Michael Pakaluk about Natural Law and the traditional Thomistic and New Natural Law perspectives.

Guest Ben Weingarten, the Editor at Large at RealClearInvestigations, joins host Garrett Snedeker to document how public and private actors (government, academia, media, and tech) have acted to curtail our natural right to speak freely in a concerted effort that Weingarten calls "The Censorship Industrial Complex." Mr. Weingarten has also testified before Congress on this issue. They discuss the recent Supreme Court decision in Murthy v. Missouri as well as how the history of the Censorship Industrial Complex stretches back to the late 1940s. Weingarten is a Senior Contributor to The Federalist, columnist at Newsweek and The Epoch Times, and a Fellow of the Claremont Institute. He is author of American Ingrate: Ilhan Omar and the Progressive-Islamist Takeover of the Democratic Party. He co-hosts the Edmund Burke Foundation’s “NatCon Squad” podcast. Ben has appeared on “The Rush Limbaugh Show,” “The Ingraham Angle,” and “The Ben Shapiro Show,” among many other programs. He is founder and CEO of ChangeUp Media, a conservative media consulting company. 

For Minisode 7, host Garrett Snedeker along with JWI Program Manager Daniel Osborne offer a live update from the 2024 Summer James Wilson Fellowship for Young Lawyers. Snedeker and Osborne discuss JWI's flagship program, the lessons on law and morality taught at the Fellowship, the broader experience for young lawyers, and how the Fellowship has grown over its eleven years.

Join the Anchoring Truths Podcast team and Dr. Yuval Levin for a deep-dive into how the Constitution may unify us again. In his new book American Covenant: How the Constitution Unified Our Nation and Could Again, Levin gives us a thorough analysis of both the written and unwritten constitution and why that structure that the American Founders gave us is still morally good and durable. Levin argues that we today through our institutions need to devote ourselves toward the project of recovering those habits and practices that historically have sustained our life under the Constitution. Yuval Levin is the director of Social, Cultural, and Constitutional Studies at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), where he also holds the Beth and Ravenel Curry Chair in Public Policy. He is the author of numerous books besides American Covenant. The founder and editor of National Affairs, he is also a senior editor at The New Atlantis, a contributing editor at National Review, and a contributing opinion writer at New York Times. Dr. Levin served as a member of the White House domestic policy staff under President George W. Bush. He was also executive director of the President’s Council on Bioethics and a congressional staffer at the member, committee, and leadership levels. He holds an MA and PhD from the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago.

Listen as Joshua Turner, Chief of Constitutional Litigation and Policy for the State of Idaho and James Wilson Fellowship Alumnus, unpacks the ramifications of the Court's decision to return the case of Idaho v. United States back to the 9th Circuit, dismissing it as improvidently granted. Josh outlines some of what we may expect from this case as it progresses.

Prof. Andrew Walker, a Christian ethics expert and author, discusses his book, 'Faithful Reason.' He tackles the challenges Protestants face with natural law, advocating for its importance in moral thought. Walker highlights the need for Christians to confidently participate in public debates by understanding shared moral principles. He also explores the connection between natural rights and marriage, addressing societal shifts in these areas. The conversation emphasizes thoughtful philosophical engagement to navigate contemporary ethical discussions.

For a special minisode, Hadley Arkes and Garrett Snedeker, who attended the 2024 National Conservatism Conference July 8-10, share impressions of both the public panel discussions and how the conference fits within our larger political and cultural moment. Edmund Burke Foundation, Organizer of NatCon 4 Video of NatCon 4 speeches and panels

Esteemed constitutional scholar and gifted law professor Randy Barnett joins the Anchoring Truths Podcast for a discussion of his new memoir A Life for Liberty: the Making of an American Originalist (Encounter). Prof. Barnett shares vignettes spanning his entire life from his deeply personal memoir on scholarship and practice, mentorship, his reconciling libertarianism and Natural Law, and his fights against anti-semitism. Randy Barnett is the Patrick Hotung Professor of Constitutional Law at the Georgetown University Law Center where he directs the Georgetown Center for the Constitution. After graduating from Northwestern University and Harvard Law School, he tried many felony cases as a prosecutor in the Cook County States’ Attorney’s Office in Chicago. A recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in Constitutional Studies and the Bradley Prize, Professor Barnett has been a visiting professor at Penn, Northwestern and Harvard Law School. His publications includes thirteen books and countless scholarly articles, book reviews, and op-eds. In 2004, he argued the medical marijuana case of Gonzalez v. Raich before the U.S. Supreme Court. In 2012, he represented the National Federation of Independent Business in its constitutional challenge to the Affordable Care Act in NFIB v. Sebelius.  Leaern more about and purchase the book here.

June 28, 2024 will be remembered as a historic day in U.S. Supreme Court history. The Court reversed its forty year old precedent in Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council, a precedent that was the most important and most cited decision in all of administrative law. The Court’s Chevron precedent established a forty year practice of broad judicial deference to federal agency’s authority to interpret ambiguous statutes according to those agencies’ own criteria. In its decision in a pair of cases concerning the regulation of activity on fishing boats falling under the purview of such a vague statute, Loper-Bright v. Raimondo and Relentless v. Department of Commerce, the Court established new grounds according to which courts, agencies, and Congress would act. To discuss this "sea-change" in the law, we’re bringing you an exclusive, immediate mini-sode with one of the lawyers part of the team that prevailed, John Vecchione. Mr. Vecchione is a Senior Litigation Counsel for the non-profit New Civil Liberties Alliance representing clients against the Administrative State. He was previously President and CEO of the non-profit Cause of Action Institute, also advancing the constitutional order. He practiced at a number of D.C. area firms. He focuses his practice on strategic litigation in the federal district and appellate courts, including the Supreme Court of the United States. Read more about John at https://nclalegal.org/personnel/john-j-vecchione/ Follow John at https://x.com/VecchTweets Learn more about the Relentless case: https://nclalegal.org/press_release/in-landmark-victory-for-civil-liberties-ncla-persuades-supreme-court-to-overturn-chevron-deference/

Minisode 4 features JWI Founder & Co-Director Hadley Arkes, who shares scenes from his recent trip to Budapest, Hungary where he keynoted a conference on the rule of law. With host Garrett Snedeker, they discuss how the Hungarian government is offering an alternative to the reigning orthodoxies and policy prescriptions of the European Union. He also details some colorful personalities with whom he enjoyed the conference hosted by the Danube Institute.