JWI Presents: Anchoring Truths Podcast

JWI Deputy Director, Garrett Snedeker, and 2023 James Wilson Fellow Jack Kieffaber discuss the impact of impending AI developments on the judiciary. Kieffaber's new article " Predictability, AI, and Judicial Futurism: Why Robots Will Run the Law and Textualists Will Like It, " forthcoming in 2025 in the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, is a stirring challenge to avowed textualists. In t...

As Constitution Day approaches, we feature a forthcoming book that tackles how far we’ve come in the Progressives’ quiet regime change over the last century, replacing our constitutional republic with rule by the administrative state. That book is American Leviathan: the birth of the Administrative State and Progressive Authoritarianism by Ned Ryun. Ryun is the Founder and CEO of American Majority...

After the Supreme Court's blockbuster decision in Loper Bright/Relentless on administrative law, the question remains what will happen next in the effort to rein in the administrative state. Host Garrett Snedeker discusses a recent essay he wrote in which he urges close attention to the lower courts wrestling with the precedent in a post-Loper Bright future with JWI Programs Director Daniel Os...

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 dis...

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 argue...

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.

Host Garrett Snedeker and JWI intern Isaac Michael speak with Prof. Andrew Walker of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary about his new book Faithful Reason: Natural Law Ethics for God’s Glory and Our Good . Professor Walker discusses his intended audience for the book, its main ideas, and his hopes for a revival of the Natural Law in American legal discussions. He also touches upon common di...

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 fig...

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 i...

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 who...

Daily Signal reporter Mary Margaret Olohan devoted book-length treatment to shed light on the little-known stories of detransitioners, those individuals who undergo hormone therapies and often transgender surgeries and then reject the path they went down. In this latest Anchoring Truths Podcast episode, Olohan shares her perspective on writing this book as a journalist under the scrutiny of the id...

2020 represented an inflection point for what some refer to as the Marxist "long march through the institutions." However, this inflection point was not spontaneous. Rather, according to our Anchoring Truths Podcast guest Mike Gonzalez, Senior Fellow at the Heritage Foundation, it was evidence of what he and his co-author call NextGen Marxism . We discuss how this NextGen Marxism arose,...

Arabella Advisors is the largest network advising and steering billions of dollars to left-of-center causes. All but a tiny percentage of Americans is unaware of its influence. Scott Walter, president of the Capital Research Center, and author of a new book about Arabella, joins host Garrett Snedeker to explore what is Arabella and how it drives so much of what happens on the Left, particularly fo...

Dr. Jay Richards, author of Fight the Good Fight , joins host Garrett Snedeker for a spirited discussion of how to fight the culture war in 21st century America. Dr. Richards is the William E. Simon Senior Research Fellow at the Heritage Foundation in Washington, DC. He is also a Senior Fellow at the Discovery Institute, Executive Editor of The Stream, Assistant Research Professor in the Busch Sch...

Statistics on marriage and family formation in modern America seem to get worse year after year. Why is this the case, and what can be done about it? Prominent sociologist Brad Wilcox joins host Garrett Snedeker for a in-depth discussion of Wilcox's new book "Get Married." The book describes why America’s most fundamental institution matters for our civilization more than ever. And f...

JWI Founder & Co-Director Hadley Arkes celebrates the advent and arrival of new JWI Co-Director Gerry Bradley at a conference JWI co-hosted with First Liberty Institute in March 2024. Prof. Arkes details and praises Prof. Bradley's intellectual contributions over a lifetime of teaching constitutional law.

Popular columnist, radio host, lawyer, and legal commentator Josh Hammer returns to the Anchoring Truths Podcast to discuss his latest piece of legal scholarship in the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, Common Good Originalism and Common Good Constitutionalism: a Convergence? Host Garrett Snedeker, who has co-written several times with Hammer, draws Hammer out on debates animating legal...

For Minisode 3, Host Garrett Snedeker & JWI Program Director Daniel Osborne discuss their recent visit to Harvard Law School for the Federalist Society National Student Symposium. The theme of the symposium was "Why Separate Powers." Snedeker and Osborne share how two panels in particular focused on topics central to JWI's work, as well as sharing observations about the student i...

Nate Fischer of the venture firm New Founding joins host Garrett Snedeker for a Mini-Sode to discuss Fischer's provocative essay in The American Mind "Meritocracy Must *Not* Be Our Goal." Fischer provides some fascinating angles on why common understandings of merit in 21st-century America undermine a flourishing society. Read the piece here: https://americanmind.org/salvo/meritocrac...

Professor Aaron Zubia joins Anchoring Truths Podcast host Garrett Snedeker to discuss his new book analyzing David Hume’s political theory with its implications on liberalism. Professor Zubia gives a glimpse into what the state of affairs was in the age of the Scottish Enlightenment, the ancient and Epicurean roots Hume has, and the modern applications and ramifications of his political theory. In...

In this special "minisode," JWI Deputy Director Garrett Snedeker and Programs Director Daniel Osborne sit down to talk a bit about the ideas and debates that came to characterize 2023. They discuss Mere Natural Law, Originalism, Historicism, and Courage.

Catherine Glenn Foster (James Wilson Fellowship Alumna '16) joins Anchoring Truths Podcast host Garrett Snedeker to discuss the state of the pro-life movement in America. They discuss recent developments in the movement, and Foster conveys the challenges that arise from outlawing abortion, encouraging pro-lifers to help and redirect young moms and families in their communities. The podcast als...