We’re living through a time when, despite all our pretending in culture, in media, in law, it increasingly seems as it “might makes right”. As Americans, we’ve got a Constitution that we’re proud of—but on so many of the key issues, our Constitution and its guarantees and protections seem to evaporate. When our Constitution is silent, Supreme Court justices spring into action to creatively furnish cultural mores or supply new rights that they discovered in “emanations” from the written text. Most Americans understand this to be what it is: raw judicial power, rule by conjecture and innuendo. What Congress won’t do, and what Americans won’t vote for, judges can simply impose.
This plays out nowhere more clearly than with the human right to life. We have a Constitutional right to life. And yet: if someone wants to void that right we simply call the situation “complex” and that right vanishes in the form of abortion, euthanasia, suicide by physician, etc. We’ve got to recover a sense in America of what’s true, what’s fundamental, what’s right.
Bill Saunders, international human rights scholar who has devoted his life to recovering first principles, joins Tom Shakely and Noah Brandt on “Life, Liberty, and Law.” Bill Saunders is a Law Fellow with the Institute for Human Ecology at The Catholic University of America, where he is also Professor and Director of the Program in Human Rights in the School of Arts & Sciences and Co-Director of the Center for Religious Liberty at the Columbus School of Law. Bill also serves as Chair of the Religious Liberties Practice Group of the Federalist Society. Prior to joining The Catholic University of America, Bill served as Senior Counsel with Americans United for Life for a decade.
The Catholic University of America, M.A. Human Rights
Unborn Human Life and Fundamental Rights: Leading Constitutional Cases under Scrutiny
