Reaching judgments in the law without appealing to natural law?’

Courage & Conversion: An Interview with Hadley Arkes

by Marcia Segelstein

Hadley Arkes is the Edward N. Ney Professor in American Institutions at Amherst College and one of the country’s most prominent proponents of natural-law jurisprudence. He is the author of numerous books, including First Things (from which the journal took its name) andNatural Rights and the Right to Choose. His latest is a collection of essays called Constitutional Illusions and Anchoring Truths: The Touchstone of the Natural Law. In an interview for the Amherst College website about the book, Arkes had this to say about natural law: “The person who asks, ‘Can I reach judgments in the law without appealing to natural law?’ is rather like the man who asks, ‘Can I order coffee without using syntax?’”

He has long been involved in the pro-life movement, and is considered the architect of the Born-Alive Infants’ Protection Act of 2002. Born a Jew, he was baptized, confirmed, and received into the Roman Catholic Church on April 24, 2010, in the chapel of the Catholic Information Center in Washington, D.C. In a column written the next day for The Catholic Thing, Arkes described how his journey began. 

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