Daniel Pitt

Jan 15, 2025 | lawliberty.org | Daniel Pitt |Daniel Mahoney |David Schaefer

In the closing sentence of his article for the 2019 Christmas issue of The Spectator, Sir Roger Scruton wrote, “Coming close to death you begin to know what life means, and what it means is gratitude.” He wrote these words as a dying man who believed he was on the road to recovery from cancer. Alas, it was not to be. As Daniel J.

Nov 7, 2024 | lawliberty.org | Nelson Lund |Robert G. Natelson |Paul Schwennesen |Daniel Pitt

In his recent forum essay on nullification, Mark Pulliam distinguished between true nullification laws—those in which a state claims that it can refuse to obey federal laws that the state deems to be contrary to the Constitution—and laws that are merely statements of disagreement or vows of non-cooperation. This is an important distinction because the states are under no constitutional obligation to endorse federal laws or to cooperate with the federal government in enforcing them.

Nov 5, 2024 | lawliberty.org | Jeffrey Polet |Jeff Polet |Paul Schwennesen |Daniel Pitt

Americans fetishize voting. Granted, exercising the right seems an important act of democratic citizenship, and denial of the franchise typically accompanies the denial of a whole range of civil rights and liberties. But our focus on voting, and especially national horse-races whose conclusions result from the plebiscite, too often distracts us from the real work of citizenship, which is studious attention and attendance to the near-at-hand.

Nov 1, 2024 | thecritic.co.uk | Daniel Pitt

Removing the Lords Spiritual from the House of Lords would be constitutional vandalism How should one define a Tory? Dr Johnson, the 18th century man of letters, thought that a Tory was a person who had an instinctive reverence for what was established. According to Johnson, this meant respect for the Crown, a prejudice in favour of the landed interest and a loyalty towards the Church of England. This could easily be summed up utilising the three C’s; that is, Constitution, Crown and Church.

Oct 29, 2024 | lawliberty.org | Daniel Pitt |John O. McGinnis |Titus Techera

As the West supposedly undergoes a “political realignment,” many thinkers from the right-of-center have attempted to reassess the meaning of conservatism. Some propose we abandon our commitments to market economics, while others seek to double down on classical liberalism. Unfortunately, relatively few of these debates focus on what might be the most operative of conservative institutions today: the common law.