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1 month ago | 
aei.org | Yuval Levin |Gary Schmitt |Adam White |J. Joel Alicea
The year 2026 marks the 250th anniversary of American independence, offering an opportunity to celebrate our country and reflect on its character and history. In the seventh symposium of AEI’s “We Hold These Truths: America at 250” initiative, scholars of American history, law, and politics discuss how the American Revolution unleashed the forces of constitution-making in the United States.
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Nov 15, 2024 | 
aei.org | With Robert Doar |Robert Doar |J. Joel Alicea |John Fortier
Hong Kong billionaire and democracy activist Jimmy Lai is China’s most famous political prisoner. In a new biography—The Troublemaker: How Jimmy Lai Became a Billionaire, Hong Kong’s Greatest Dissident, and China’s Most Feared Critic—Mark L. Clifford, veteran Hong Kong journalist and president of the Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong Foundation, explores Lai’s rise to fame, his two-decade campaign for democracy in Hong Kong, and his political persecution by the Chinese regime.
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Nov 14, 2024 | 
aei.org | John Fortier |J. Joel Alicea |Kevin Corinth |Angela Rachidi
Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger is known nationally for his work on contested elections, most notably during the 2018 Georgia gubernatorial race between Brian Kemp and Stacey Abrams and the 2020 presidential election. Join us as Secretary Raffensperger, AEI’s John C.
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Oct 30, 2024 | 
aei.org | Kevin R. Kosar |Mackenzie Eaglen |J. Joel Alicea |Kevin Corinth
The Senate did not pass a budget resolution this spring, nor did it enact any of the dozen annual spending bills. The Senate’s most recent Calendar of Business lists 70 pages of bills on matters large and small awaiting votes. When the chamber is in session, it often spends its time voting on nominations instead. What has become of the world’s greatest deliberative body? What can be done to revive it? Join AEI’s Kevin R.
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Apr 15, 2024 | 
aei.org | J. Joel Alicea
VIDEOOn April 9, Harvard Law School welcomed Joel Alicea ’13, co-director of the Project on Constitutional Originalism and the Catholic Intellectual Tradition, and associate professor of law at The Catholic University of America Columbus School of Law, to deliver the Herbert W. Vaughan Memorial Lecture, “The Natural Law Moment in Constitutional Theory.” Jack Goldsmith, Learned Hand Professor of Law, gave introductory remarks.
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Mar 13, 2024 | 
aei.org | J. Joel Alicea |Brent Orrell |Adam White |Frederick M. Hess
How should Americans think about the writ of habeas corpus? American jurists have long treated it as a bulwark of individual liberty, but new originalist scholarship argues that a more historically faithful understanding of the writ should focus instead on the concept of popular sovereignty. Recent Supreme Court cases have revealed deep confusion over the writ, demonstrating that we need an account of habeas corpus truer to its historical purpose.
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Feb 5, 2024 | 
aei.org | Kevin Stack |J. Joel Alicea |Nat Malkus |Thomas Miller
Changes in the Supreme Court’s membership have shifted its approach to interpretation in a more textualist and originalist direction. That approach appears to be a basis for the Court’s increasing skepticism of foundational concepts of modern administrative law, such as delegation and deference. The Court is currently considering overruling Chevron deference, and it has revived something akin to the nondelegation doctrine through the major questions doctrine.
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Jan 29, 2024 | 
aei.org | Thomas Miller |J. Joel Alicea |Nat Malkus |Timothy Carney
Almost 14 years ago, President Barack Obama signed into law the Affordable Care Act (ACA). The law survived a series of legal and political challenges during its implementation, but they came at a cost to its initial ambitions. In a forthcoming study, “The Ghosts of the Affordable Care Act,” Miami University Law Professor Gabriel Scheffler examines the enactment-entrenchment trade-offs that limit the scope and durability of major social program legislation.
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Sep 26, 2023 | 
aei.org | Brian Miller |J. Joel Alicea |Timothy Carney |Robert George
Over 30 million Americans use combustible tobacco, with resulting annual downstream mortality exceeding 480,000. In the face of this long-standing public health challenge, electronic nicotine delivery systems, or e-cigarettes, emerged in the early 2000s as a new tobacco product category. With emerging evidence showing decreased risks relative to combustible tobacco, e-cigarettes can serve as a harm-reduction option for current combustible tobacco users.
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Aug 30, 2023 | 
aei.org | J. Joel Alicea
There is an ongoing debate among scholars and commentators about the compatibility of originalism and the natural-law tradition. Most prominently, Harvard law professor Adrian Vermeule and emeritus Amherst professor Hadley Arkes have argued that originalism is incompatible with the natural-law tradition. I have taken the opposite view, arguing in an article in the Notre Dame Law Review (NDLR) that originalism is consistent with the natural-law tradition in the American context.
