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2 weeks ago | 
lawliberty.org | Hans Eicholz |Richard Alan Ryerson |Titus Techera |Graham McAleer
In his bracing account of the reasons for the clash of American and British forces at Lexington and Concord, Richard Ryerson has touched on several of the most vital themes of both British and American constitutional history, running from Magna Carta (1215) to the Glorious Revolution (1688–89) to the American Revolution (1776).
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Jul 16, 2024 | 
lawliberty.org | John Grove |David Goldman |Isaac Willour |Hans Eicholz
The scene was shocking, to be sure. But sadly, it wasn’t surprising. In fact, one might be forgiven for wondering at the fact that more bullets haven’t been flying at political rallies. You don’t have to look far on any social media outlet to find people salivating at the prospect of a politics of enmity and blood. And these are not just occasional cranks that nobody listens to, but often people with tens or hundreds of thousands of followers and sometimes with serious money behind them.
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Jul 4, 2024 | 
lawliberty.org | Hans Eicholz |Randy Barnett |Richard Samuelson |Elizabeth Corey
Thomas Jefferson’s Summary View of the Rights of British America, composed sometime in the latter half of this month, 250 years ago, ought to be regarded as among the most fundamental primary sources informing our understanding of the spirit and history of the American constitutional tradition, but it is rarely considered in this way. Rather, it has served mainly as a backdrop to its more famous linear offspring, the Declaration of Independence.
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May 1, 2024 | 
lawliberty.org | Hans Eicholz |Michael Lucchese |Samuel Gregg
Thomas Jefferson was a complicated man. He owned over 600 enslaved people throughout his life, but he also famously wrote that “all men are created equal.” He was a passionate revolutionary, but he also became an icon to certain conservatives. Like the country he helped found, Jefferson contained multitudes. Liberty Fund senior fellow Hans Eicholz, in his book Harmonizing Sentiments, has set out to uncover the “coherent political tradition” amidst these complications and contradictions.
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Dec 20, 2023 | 
oll.libertyfund.org | Hans Eicholz
There was a time when Bill represented the face of Liberty Fund to the wider public, but he had a long and distinguished career well before that time in both higher education and public service.
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Dec 15, 2023 | 
lawliberty.org | Hans Eicholz |Aaron Rhodes |Juliana Geran Pilon |Graham Linehan
December 16, 2023 will mark the 250th anniversary of the Boston Tea Party. That event saw three bands of fifty men, loosely disguised as Mohawk warriors, proceed to board three tea ships of the East India Company and dump some 90,000 pounds of tea into the bay. The Tea Party sparked the long series of imperial measures and colonial countermeasure that would eventually lead to the shooting war of the American Revolution.
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Dec 12, 2023 | 
lawliberty.org | Fred Kaplan |Hans Eicholz |Graham McAleer |Daniel Mahoney
The Declaration of Independence, the most revered document to have been issued from the pen of Thomas Jefferson, contains both soaring rhetoric and serious constitutional arguments that the colonists had been making for over a decade. And Jefferson’s other writings similarly evince both a striking literary style and serious thought. In His Masterly Pen, Fred Kaplan admirably captures the former, but dismisses the latter. I enjoyed reading and arguing with this book.
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Oct 9, 2023 | 
oll.libertyfund.org | Hans Eicholz
I heartily second your reasons for reading James Madison and want to build on your insight into Madison’s role in the formation of what is often called the First Party System in the United States. There were good reasons for his doing so. One way to explore why he entered into opposition against his former ally, Alexander Hamilton, is to contemplate two texts in conjunction with each other and ask, why do they appear so profoundly different in their implications?
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Oct 9, 2023 | 
oll.libertyfund.org | Hans Eicholz
In July’s Liberty Matters Discussion of the Declaration of Independence, a main theme of our deliberations was on the role and purpose of history. A distinction was made between an older ethic of understanding the past in its own terms versus judging past actions for their moral or ethical content. The idea of understanding context is old only in relation to modern practices, however, which are increasingly seeing the reassertion of the view that the past can and should be judged.
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Oct 9, 2023 | 
oll.libertyfund.org | Hans Eicholz
Indeed, for some people, including Madison himself, Hamilton might be regarded as having been altogether too creative and too impressionistic. But in an age that looks to the exercise of government in so many aspects of our lives and at all levels of politics, it is no wonder that Hamilton has become the rock star of the Founding Band. It is precisely because of this creative aspect of Hamilton’s constitutional interpretation that he merits close and sustained reading.
