A Moral Hazard for the Constitution

Hadley Arkes, emeritus professor of political science and jurisprudence at Amherst, models his latest book on C.S. Lewis's Mere Christianity. Lewis aimed to compress the fundamentals of his faith into a set of "principles that are accessible even to children." Arkes, who has articulated a natural-law and natural-rights-based approach to constitutional interpretation, endeavors to state the "anchoring truths" of that doctrine in a manner understandable "by virtually everyone," without prior philosophical or jurisprudential training. He believes that "ordinary people" can be brought to grasp "principles of common sense that are far more precise, with a practical import," than homilies like "be kind," and can be shown how those truths apply to constitutional issues.