I review Donald Drakeman’s new book, The Free Exercise Clause and the Rights of Conscience, which challenges the idea that the original meaning of the Free Exercise Clause mandates religious exemptions from generally applicable laws. canopyforum.org/2026/09/23/d...

"Drakeman’s Faint-hearted Originalism" by Andrew Koppelman - Canopy Forum

Senate Revisions to House Proposed Amendments to the U.S. Constitution, National Archives (US-PD) On October 15, Canopy Forum, hosted by the Center for the Study of Law and Religion, will be organizin...

canopyforum.org

Does liberty mean a right to kill other people’s children, slowly and painfully? It would, if the Trump administration had its way. www.usatoday.com/story/opinio...

Trump has made 'freedom' a cover for killing kids | Opinion

Measles and SSPE kill more often than doctors once believed. The Trump administration's vaccine exemptions could expose thousands of children to it.

usatoday.com

A neglected justification for freedom of speech: hearing horrible speech, and learning how to handle that, can make you a better person. www.journaloffreespeechlaw.org/koppelman.pdf

My review of a new, remarkably hagiographic biography of Justice Samuel Alito. lareviewofbooks.org/article/alit...

Saint Alito | Los Angeles Review of Books

Mollie Hemingway offers up an uncritical biography of Justice Samuel Alito, the Supreme Court’s most conservative jurist.

lareviewofbooks.org

Chief Justice John Roberts' legal reasoning in the birthright citizenship case is careful and narrow. But it misses the bigger point: The 14th Amendment was written to prevent a permanent underclass in America. www.usatoday.com/story/opinio... via @usatoday

Roberts saved birthright citizenship, ducked the real danger | Opinion

The Supreme Court says citizenship can't depend on your parents' immigration status. So why are millions of American families still being torn apart?

usatoday.com

Howard Wasserman is right that my recent National Affairs essay, “The First-person Appeal of Free Speech,” has an unintended political skew: balkin.blogspot.com/2026/06/wass....

I have a new piece in National Affairs, in which I explain (drawing on Milton, Mill, and Aristotle) why exposure to worthless and harmful speech can make you a better person. nationalaffairs.com/publications...

The First-person Appeal of Free Speech

Today's free-speech debates tend to focus on its social utility. But John Milton and John Stuart Mill made a deeper case: that a regime of free discourse makes us into better people, cultivating the m...

nationalaffairs.com

Suppose a state mandated that signs be posted in every public school classroom declaring “Jesus is Lord.” Wouldn’t that violate the First Amendment’s ban on establishments of religion? Until last month, the answer was clearly yes. thehill.com/opinion/cong...

The latest ruling on the Ten Commandments in Texas threatens religious freedom

This law is the kind of manipulative state fake-piety that promotes contempt for the real thing.

thehill.com

The Danube Institute in Budapest has just published an exchange between me and two of its resident scholars on the question, "Is Liberalism Inherently Authoritarian?" danubeinstitute.hu/en/research/...

I'm pleased to be quoted extensively in Thomas Edsall's NY Times piece on JD Vance, and even more pleased that he linked to my critique of Patrick Deneen and Adrian Vermeule. www.nytimes.com/2026/03/03/o...

Opinion | JD Vance Has His Reasons

nytimes.com

Postliberalism, the claim that liberalism inevitably degenerates into its repressive opposite, is so undertheorized that it is hard to give an intelligible account of its claims. I explain in a new piece at the Unpopulist. open.substack.com/pub/theunpop...

The Unbearable Intellectual Lightness of the Postliberal Being

Its case that liberalism must turn into its opposite is based on feelings, not theory or real world evidence

open.substack.com

"Is the Supreme Court Legitimate?," a recent panel discussion between me, Gerard Bradley (Notre Dame), and Richard Epstein (Chicago). Now on video. youtu.be/twknPAX7EGk?... via @YouTube

Is the Supreme Court Legitimate?

YouTube video by Center for Religion, Culture & Democracy

youtu.be

An interesting conversation, on the Danube Institute's podcast from Budapest, with Philip Pilkington and Jacob Williams, delightful interlocutors with dangerously wrong notions about liberalism. open.spotify.com/episode/2cZf...

Liberalism's Last Stand | Danube Culture

open.spotify.com

If any of you happen to be in Budapest on Dec. 3, stop by the Danube Institute for my event and say hi. danubeinstitute.hu/en/events/is...

Is Liberalism a Threat to Religious Liberty? - Danube Institute

danubeinstitute.hu

Some students at my university, Northwestern, have been protesting and refusing a requirement that they watch a training video about antisemitism. This sorry episode is a wasted opportunity for education in an area where ignorance is rife. thehill.com/opinion/educ...

Trump is trying to take away from trans veterans benefits that they've already earned. slate.com/news-and-pol...

Trump Is Trying to Take Benefits From Veterans That They’ve Already Earned

One hardly knows where to begin.

slate.com

The Supreme Court has misrepresented the Establishment Clause history on which it purports to rely, arbitrarily narrowing its description of the paradigmatic wrong the clause aims to end. papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

Is it a political mistake to kill your voters and their children? That hypothesis will soon be tested. thehill.com/opinion/heal...

I generally don't look for wisdom from politicians. So I'm mightily impressed by the remarkable insightful Rep. Sarah McBride, and agree with every single thing she says in this long interview. Required reading. www.nytimes.com/2025/06/17/o...

Opinion | Sarah McBride on Why the Left Lost on Trans Rights

nytimes.com

The Journal of Contemporary Legal Issues has published a symposium on my book, BURNING DOWN THE HOUSE: HOW LIBERTARIAN PHILOSOPHY WAS CORRUPTED BY DELUSION AND GREED. digital.sandiego.edu/jcli/vol26/i...

It’s refreshing to hear Bill Gates say it about Elon Musk: “the world’s richest man has been involved in the deaths of the world’s poorest children.” www.nytimes.com/2025/05/08/m...

The $200 Billion Gamble: Bill Gates’s Plan to Wind Down His Foundation

nytimes.com

For those who are interested, a somewhat specialized conversation between myself, Michael McConnell, and Vincent Phillip Muñoz on originalism and religious exemptions: www.civitasinstitute.org/research/rel...

Religious Exemptions?: What the Free Exercise Clause Means |

A conversation among three religious liberty scholars on the Free Exercise Clause’s original meaning.

civitasinstitute.org

Who knew that Justice Samuel Alito was such a trusting person? thehill.com/opinion/judi...

Steve Vladeck is characteristically clear and accurate in explaining what the Supreme Court just did in the deportation cases. www.stevevladeck.com/p/140-the-di...

140. The Disturbing Myopia of Trump v. J.G.G.

In normal times, it might be possible to defend the Supreme Court's 5-4 ruling on Monday vacating a pair of temporary restraining orders in the Alien Enemy Act case. But these aren't normal times.

stevevladeck.com

The principal virtue of Neil Gorsuch's new book is the light it unintentionally sheds on some of the Supreme Court’s least defensible decisions. lareviewofbooks.org/article/the-...

The Mystery of Neil Gorsuch | Los Angeles Review of Books

Andrew Koppelman delves into Neil Gorsuch and Janie Nitze’s “Over Ruled: The Human Toll of Too Much Law.”

lareviewofbooks.org

John Wilkes Booth was a racist murderer, but that apparently wasn’t the worst thing about him. The worst thing was that he used “the N-word.” thehill.com/opinion/civi...

Misguided anti-racism campaign cancels college Sondheim production

Theater is a potent medium for showing us the truth of what people do to one another.

thehill.com

On the ugly rhetoric of Dobbs v. Women's Health: wm.billofrightsjournal.org/wp-content/u...

I'm looking forward to participating in this online symposium on religion and secularism, run by Chicago-Kent Law, this Friday, Feb. 21. studentorgs.kentlaw.iit.edu/cklawreview/...

In Search of Common Ground: Religion and Secularism in a Liberal Democratic Society - Chicago-Kent Law Review

2025 Chicago-Kent Law Review Online Live Symposium Symposium Editors Steven J. Heyman, Chicago-Kent College of Law Kathleen A. Brady, Emory University Chicago-Kent College of Law February 21, 2025 Con...

studentorgs.kentlaw.iit.edu

Hadley Arkes's natural law arguments against gay rights and abortion neglect important aspects of the natural law tradition. journals.law.harvard.edu/jlpp/critiqu...

Critiquing Hadley Arkes’s not-so-mere Natural Law Theory – Andrew Koppelman

Critiquing Hadley Arkes’s not-so-mere Natural Law Theory Andrew Koppelman* Law can’t be separated from morality, because law is a kind of human conduct.  So is compliance with the law.  Morality co…

journals.law.harvard.edu

Trump would have sent Jewish refugees back to Nazi Germany. Trump Administration Revokes Protections for Venezuelans in the U.S. www.nytimes.com/2025/02/02/u...

Trump Administration Revokes Protections for Venezuelans in the U.S.

The decision to revoke Temporary Protected Status signals that President Trump will continue to dismantle a program that aims to protect migrants from potentially dangerous countries.

nytimes.com