National League baseball has just marked its 150th Opening Day. As plans to commemorate the centennial of American Independence took shape in the spring of 1876, a sport that more than any other would embody our national identity was formally organized by Chicago businessman William Hulbert. For fifteen decades since that first Opening Day in April, baseball has been the...

　　At national academic conferences, law professors sometimes play a variant of a game of “one-downsmanship.” It’s a contest to determine whose state supreme court is the worst. It is sad to report that when I was on the faculty at the University of Montana law school, I always won those contests. 　　While all state high courts have their flaws, the...

　　There are many reasons to celebrate the 250th year of American independence, but among the best is the tradition of religious liberty. Rather than merely tolerating dissent, the Founders achieved the great unshackling of human conscience. Among their number, this revolution in human sentiments may be best observed in John Adams, specifically with regard to his evolving views of Catholics....

　　If the celebrations of this year’s semiquincentennial of independence are any indication, most Americans take pride in the revolutionary birth of our Republic. July 4, 1776, marked the birth of a “novus ordo seclorum,” and this nation seemed to have the power, as Thomas Paine wrote, “to begin the world over again.” Conservatives have always been somewhat ambivalent about those...

　　The ESG movement—Environmental, Social, and Governance—achieved the rare feat of moving from business schools and boardrooms into mainstream public and political discourse. What began as a technical framework for evaluating firm-level risk has, over time, evolved into a sweeping set of expectations about what corporations owe not only shareholders but also society at large. In that evolution, ESG has taken...

　　There is a question that legal systems have answered, with remarkable consistency, for centuries: when a decision cannot be undone, how much institutional gravity should surround it? The death penalty, the severing of parental rights, the deportation of a citizen—around these acts, civilized orders built their most demanding procedural architectures. Adversarial hearings. Independent judges. The obligation to exhaust every alternative...

　　Jürgen Habermas (1929–2026) dominated post-war European liberal philosophy. He dedicated his life to the rational foundation of a global liberal order and the post-national European Union. 　　Loaded with philosophical terms, his writing does not invite the reader, yet there is pathos in the background. Habermas addressed the question of whether the Enlightenment was the cause of the German genocides and...

　　In the past few weeks, Hungary has been in the news. The election pitted Viktor Orbán, the controversial prime minister who has ruled for sixteen years, against a former member of his own party, Péter Magyar. To European and American observers, the election was about the fate of liberty against a would-be autocrat. Hungary, it seems, has always been a...

　　The freedom of association is surely the humblest and least-touted First Amendment right, and yet, as Luke Sheahan explains in this keynote lecture, it is crucial for preserving our liberty and rejuvenating our culture. Natural and freely-chosen human associations are our best defense against a political clerisy that often feels entitled to social engineer American life. Free citizens should be...

　　The current United States–Israeli war with Iran is intended, in part, to prevent that nation from acquiring a nuclear weapon. For Israel, a nuclear-armed Iran—sworn to the destruction of the Jewish state—is an existential threat. For the United States and its regional and European allies, an Iranian regime capable of launching intermediate-range ballistic missiles is untenable. 　　This war, however, should...

　　John Locke’s A Letter Concerning Toleration is widely regarded as a foundational text of religious liberty. For centuries, thinkers have praised its clarity, moral confidence, and rejection of the coercive religious politics that prevailed in early modern Europe. On the surface, Locke offers a simple and powerful claim: the state has no authority over the salvation of souls, and therefore...

　　Niall Ferguson received Liberty Fund’s George F. Will Award for advancing our understanding of the wellsprings of Western prosperity on April 13, 2026, in Washington, DC. The award recognizes individuals who, like George F. Will, have made significant contributions to our understanding of the free society, individual liberty, and the human condition. 　　Niall Ferguson’s work takes liberty seriously—not as an inevitability,...