Founder and Director, James Wilson Institute on Natural Rights & the American Founding
Hadley Arkes joined the faculty of Amherst College in 1966. He became the Edward Ney Professor of Jurisprudence in 1987, and held that chair until he retired officially in July 2015. But he has not retired from writing and speaking. He has carried that teaching into a new phase; he has become the Founder and Director of the James Wilson Institute on Natural Rights and the American Founding in Washington, D.C. He has written eight books, mostly with Princeton and Cambridge University Presss. Among the books at Princeton have been: The Philosopher in the City (1981), First Things (1986), Beyond the Constitution (1990), and The Return of George Sutherland (1994). With Cambridge Press he has done Natural Rights and the Right to Choose (2002), and Constitutional Illusions & Anchoring Truths: The Touchstone of the Natural Law (2010). His most recent book, with Regnery Press is Mere Natural Law (2023) His articles have appeared in professional journals, but apart from his writing in more scholarly formats, he has become known to a wider audience through his writings in the Wall Street Journal, National Review, Civitas and First Things, a journal that took its name from his book of that title.
He was the main advocate, and architect, of the bill that became known as the Born-Alive Infants’ Protection Act. The account of his experience, in moving the bill through Congress, is contained as an epilogue or memoir in his book, Natural Rights & the Right to Choose. Arkes first prepared his proposal as part of the debating kit assembled for the first George Bush in 1988. The purpose of that proposal was to offer the “most modest first step” of all in legislating on abortion, and opening a conversation even with people who called themselves “pro-choice.” Professor Arkes proposed to begin simply by preserving the life of a child who survived an abortion–contrary to the holding of one federal judge, that such a child was not protected by the laws. Professor Arkes led the testimony on the bill before the Judiciary Committee of the U.S. House in July 2000, then again in July 2001. The legislative calendar was upended in the aftermath of September 11th, but in March 2002, the bill was brought to the floor of the House, where it passed unanimously. To the surprise of Professor Arkes, the bill was brought to the floor of the Senate on July 18 by the Deputy Majority Leader, Harry Reid, and passed in the same way. On August 5, President Bush signed the bill into law with Professor Arkes in attendance.
Professor Arkes was the founder, at Amherst, of the Committee for the American Founding, a group of alumni and students seeking to preserve, at Amherst, the doctrines of “natural rights” taught by the American Founders and Lincoln. That interest has been carried over now to the founding of a new center for the jurisprudence of natural law, in Washington, D.C.: the James Wilson Institute on Natural Rights and the American Founding, named for one of the premier minds among the American Founders. Professor Arkes has drawn to this project a cluster of accomplished federal judges who have wanted to get a firmer hold on the natural law, and brought them together with some gifted teachers of philosophy and law. The new institute will be sponsoring lectures and seminars in Washington and other parts of the country. The purpose of this new James Wilson Institute is to teach anew, to lawyers, judges, and students those principles of law that furnished the guide to the American Founders as they set about framing a Constitution. And the hope is to restore, to a new generation, the furnishings of mind of the men who formed this regime.
Dr. John Eastman is the former Henry Salvatori Professor of Law & Community Service and former Dean at Chapman University's Dale E. Fowler School of Law, where he had been a member of the faculty since 1999, specializing in Constitutional Law, Legal History, and Property. He is a founding director of the Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence, a public interest law firm affiliated with the Claremont Institute that he founded in 1999. He has a Ph.D. in Government from the Claremont Graduate School and a J.D. from the University of Chicago Law School, and a B.A. in Politics and Economics from the University of Dallas. He serves as the Chairman of the Board of the National Organization for Marriage.
Prior to joining the Chapman law faculty, Dr. Eastman served as a law clerk to the Honorable Clarence Thomas, Associate Justice, Supreme Court of the United States, and to the Honorable J. Michael Luttig, Judge, United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit and practiced law with the national law firm of Kirkland & Ellis. Dr. Eastman has also represented numerous clients in important constitutional law matters and has argued before the Supreme Court. On behalf of the Claremont Institute Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence, he has participated as amicus curiae before the Supreme Court of the United States, U.S. Courts of Appeals, and State Supreme Courts in more than one hundred cases of constitutional significance, including Boy Scouts of America v. Dale, Zelman v. Simmons-Harris (the school vouchers case), Kelo v. New London, Ct. (eminent domain), and Van Orden v. Perry (the 10 Commandments case). He has also appeared as an expert legal commentator on numerous television and radio programs, including C-SPAN, Fox News, PBS, NewsHour, and The O'Reilly Factor.
Partner, Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP
Kannon is the head of our Supreme Court & Appellate practice. He has argued 39 cases before the U.S. Supreme Court and has argued more than 150 appeals in courts across the country, including every federal court of appeals and numerous state courts.
Kannon is ranked as a “Star Individual” in appellate law by Chambers USA, where a client notes, “It’s hard to think of enough superlatives to describe his talent, his judgment, his ability, his experience – he is as good as it gets.” Legal 500 U.S. recognizes Kannon in its Hall of Fame for appellate work. A client shares, “His work is the best in the business, and he is a wonderful human being in addition to being a world-class appellate litigator.”
In 2024 and 2022, Kannon was a finalist for the American Lawyer’s “Litigator of the Year” award. He was named “Appellate Litigator of the Year” by Benchmark Litigation in 2021 and was a 2026 finalist for that recognition.
Before entering private practice, Kannon served as an Assistant to the Solicitor General at the U.S. Department of Justice.
Tocqueville Associate Professor Department of Political Science and Concurrent Associate Professor of Law, University of Notre Dame Law School
Vincent Phillip Muñoz is the Tocqueville Associate Professor of Religion & Public Life in the Department of Political Science at the University of Notre Dame. He is the founding director of Notre Dame's undergraduate minor in Constitutional Studies and directs Notre Dame's Tocqueville Program for Inquiry into Religion and Public Life.
Muñoz writes and teaches across the fields of constitutional law, American politics, and political philosophy with a focus on religious liberty and the American Founding. His first book, God and the Founders: Madison, Washington, and Jefferson (Cambridge University Press, 2009) won the Hubert Morken Award from the American Political Science Association for the best publication on religion and politics in 2009 and 2010. His First Amendment church-state case reader, Religious Liberty and the American Supreme Court: The Essential Cases and Documents (Rowman & Littlefield) was first published in 2013 (revised edition, 2015) and is being used at Notre Dame and other leading universities.
Muñoz's current project is a scholarly monograph on the natural right of religious liberty and the original meaning of the First Amendment's Religion Clauses. Articles from that project have appeared in American Political Science Review, The Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, Notre Dame Law Review, American Political Thought, and the University of Pennsylvania's Journal of Constitutional Law.
Legal Director, The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education
Will began defending student and faculty rights for FIRE in 2006 after graduating from New York University School of Law, where he served as an associate executive editor for the New York University Law Review. Will has appeared on national cable television and radio on behalf of FIRE and has spoken to students, faculty, administrators, and attorneys at events across the country. Will’s writing has been published by The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, the Chronicle of Higher Education, Jurist, Inside Higher Ed, Daily Journal, the Charleston Law Review, and many other outlets. Will edited the second edition of FIRE’s Guide to Due Process and Campus Justice, co-edited the second edition of FIRE’s Guide to Free Speech on Campus, and has coauthored amicus curiae briefs submitted to a number of courts, including the Supreme Court of the United States and the United States Courts of Appeals for the Third, Ninth, and Eleventh Circuits. Will has taught FIRE’s Continuing Legal Education programs in New York, Pennsylvania, and online. A member of the New York State Bar and the First Amendment Lawyers Association, Will serves as Co-Chair of the Education Subcommittee of the American Bar Association’s Section of Administrative Law and Regulatory Practice.
Will graduated magna cum laude from New York University’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study in 2003. A proud native of Buffalo, New York, Will now lives in New Jersey with his wife and two children.
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