JWI Presents: Anchoring Truths Podcast

In another installment of our America 250-themed episodes of the Anchoring Truths Podcast, we are delighted to bring you a deep-dive into Independence Hall, a building almost synonymous with the American Revolution and which is also our logo at the James Wilson Institute. Before anyone signed anything there, Independence Hall was just Pennsylvania’s State House. It was built because of a riot. In...

As the nation marks its 250th anniversary, Jesse Wegman’s new biography The Lost Founder has brought fresh attention to James Wilson, the Institute's namesake. Wilson, the Scottish-born signer of the Declaration and Constitution, author of the first full draft that began with “We the People,” and one of the first Supreme Court justices, certainly deserved a fresh biography. But Wegman, a forme...

Received wisdom of the present moment in constitutional and statutory interpretation begins with the text and moves to the logic, structure, or context of that text, before then focusing on historical practice. What is the role of tradition in American constitutional law?  Why do we so often keep coming back to it even when we have an elite legal culture that is now more focused than ever on ascer...

Whenever we at the James Wilson Institute begin one of our weeklong fellowships or even our weekend introductory seminars on Natural Law Jurisprudence, we begin not with the writings of our institute’s namesake or even other familiar figures from the Founding. Instead we begin, as Prof. Hadley Arkes’s classic book First Things begins, with the opening pages of Aristotle’s Politics on that moral as...

As we are about to celebrate Constitution Day in 2026, our latest guest on the Anchoring Truths Podcast says we no longer live under the Constitution as the people who wrote and ratified it understood it. That guest is Ilan Wurman, the Julius E. Davis Professor of Law at the University of Minnesota. The topic we will be discussing his Wurman’s new book, The Constitution of 1789: A New Introduction...

Our latest Anchoring Truths Podcast returns to a topic discussed at the beginning of the summer which has only added resonance since: the true meaning of birthright citizenship under the Fourteenth Amendment. Our guest is a true giant of the American legal academy—Richard A. Epstein. Laurence A. Tisch Professor of Law at NYU, Director of the Classical Liberal Institute, James Parker Hall Distingui...

Join the Anchoring Truths Podcast as we host author Tim Goeglein for a discussion of his newly co-authored book What Really Matters: Restoring a Legacy of Faith, Freedom, and Family . Goeglein shares his thoughts on American public life, particularly the engagement in politics, culture, and religion amongst Gen Z. The book is a collection of his sharpest columns that zero in on the six pillars we...

Imagine being three years old in the heart of the Congo. Your father has just died of cancer. Your mother is left alone to raise five children in a world of poverty, tribal conflict, and political chaos. By every human measure, your future should have been written in hardship and limitation. But that is not the story God wrote for Athanase Kadita Tshibaka—known to friends andcolleagues simply as A...

As part of our ongoing series of episodes devoted to thecelebration of the 250th Anniversary of the Declaration, we are delighted to bring you an episode devoted to the legal relevance of the Declaration’s most famous sentence, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life,...

For the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, we are pleased to share an intimate discussion with Dr. Matthew Spalding whose timely new book  The Making of the American Mind  explores the philosophic underpinnings of and story behind the Declaration. Please enjoy this special Anchoring Truths episode as a celebration of our nation’s Independence and Founding. Spalding, dean of Hill...

Our latest Anchoring Truths Podcast episode focuses on a new book Taking American Citizenship Seriously: The Recovery of the Fourteenth Amendment. Our guest is the author that book, David R. Upham. With the book, Professor Upham delivers a comprehensive account of the original understanding of the Fourteenth Amendment. Drawing on a close textual analysis, Upham shows how the framers shaped the Ame...

Our latest Anchoring Truths Podcast episode centers on a 2026 case in the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, covering New York City. This case presented a fascinating opportunity to discuss the intersection of Natural Law, international law, and contract law. Petersen Energia Inversora v. YPF (2nd Cir. opinion here ) concerns how Argentina raised more than a billion dollars from American investors o...

As we continue our commemoration of America 250, we’re inspired to present a variety of different celebrations of our country. In that spirit, we are honored to welcome on theshow Dr. Matthew Mehan of Hillsdale College, Associate Dean and Associate Professor of Government at the Van Andel Graduate School in Washington, D.C. A literary scholar with a Ph. D. from the University of Dallas, Dr. Mehan...

We’ve devoted past Anchoring Truths Podcast episodes to the promise of AI in the legal profession and beyond. Today, we’ll be discussing more of the perils of that technology with Professor Glenn Harlan Reynolds. He's the Beauchamp BroganDistinguished Professor of Law at the University of Tennessee and the mind behind the legendary Instapundit blog. In his brand-new Encounter Books Broadside,...

This week's Anchoring Truths Podcast is a roundtable discussion of the James Wilson Institute's travels around the country to law school campuses from February-April. JWI Founder & Co-Director Hadley Arkes and Programs Director Daniel Osborne join host Garrett Snedeker to describe what they saw from law students at four different campuses during JWI's law school seminars as well as...

Our latest episode is a little bit of a something differentthan what we’re used to featuring on the Anchoring Truths Podcast. Our guest this week is an expert on etiquette, Alison Cheperdak. Whether from the hallowed halls of the West Wing to the bustling chaos of a newsroom, Cheperdak captures stories of her experiences rendered with vivid detail, emotional resonance, and the intimacy of a confid...

Our latest episode features a living legend and one of our oldest, closest friends at the James Wilson Institute: Prof. J. Budziszewski on the occasion of the release of his new book “Pandemic of Lunacy: How to Think Clearly When Everyone Around You Seems Crazy” from Creed and Culture. In ourconversation we will discuss his new book as well as his work at the intersection of Natural Law, constitut...

As part of our ongoing series of joint programs with our friends at First Liberty’s Center for Religion, Culture, and Democracy, we’re delighted to bring you a provocative lecture from Hiram Sasser on “The Religious Liberty Solution to Big Tech Censorship: How The Religious Freedom Restoration ActLimits Section 230”. Sasser is the Executive General Counsel for First Liberty Institute, a leading no...

In 2026, we celebrate 250 years since our Declaration of Independence. In honor of this milestone in our country’s history, we’ll be placing an extra emphasis on the American Founding in episodes and with guests this year. And there’s no better place to start on this theme than in the James Wilson Institute’s backyard, historic Old Town Alexandria, Virginia the home of the Institute since 2021, an...

Vice President JD Vance is one of the most influential Republicans in America. But unlike many politicians, he is a public intellectual. Long before holding office, he was a prolific writer and speaker, wrestling with the core issues facing conservatism in America. Vance has emerged to be in many ways the intellectual synthesizer of various emerging threads of the GOP in law, politics, and culture...

Judicial supremacy has been a frequent topic of conversation on the Anchoring Truths Podcast, but never before have we analyzed it from a comparative or international perpective. Yonatan Green, the author of Rogue Justice: the Rise of Judicial Supremacy in Israel , allows us to do both on the latest episode. Green's timely new book chronicles the experience of the Israeli Supreme Court's i...

One of the country's foremost authorities on executive power, Prof. Saikrishna “Sai” Prakash, joins the Anchoring Truths Podcast to discuss his fascinating new book The Presidential Pardon . Prof. Prakash’s slim new tome from Harvard University Press delivers an engaging analysis of the Constitution’s Pardon Clause and its transformation over the centuries into a blunt and potent instrument th...

Join the Anchoring Truths Podcast for a tour de force from our friend Prof. Josh Blackman. In the height of the politicization of the judicial branch, the federal courts cannot be reformed through unilateral disarmament, argues Blackman. Rather, any federal judicial reform must be bilateral. Blackman lays out a set of ten proposals for reducing the power both the Right and the Left exert through t...

In light of the tragic killing of Charlie Kirk, the culture of American Campuses and Free Speech - which Kirk fought so hard for - are more relevant than ever. Profs. Hadley Arkes & Justin Dyer share a discussion of a new way to look at free speech, its purpose, and the best way to restore its role at American Universities. Arkes Symposium Article Dyer Symposium Article Please note that this e...

With less than one more before the Supreme Court’s oral argument in one of the most explosive cases of this term, Trump v. Slaughter, you're encouraged to join the Anchoring Truths Podcast for a discussion of this important case over whether the President remove any Senate-confirmed commissioner of an agency he no longer wishes to have serve in that federal agency. The constitutional question in t...