Charles Darwin was a brilliant naturalist privileged to live in extraordinary times, when intrepid voyagers like himself would return from their circumnavigations around the world with their ships’ holds filled with tens of thousands of never previously described species of insects, fish, plants and mammals.  This revelation of the astonishing diversity of the living world extended […]

Introduction It is a commonplace that one of the main problems with developing countries is that their societies, starting with their leaders, are corrupt and that until and unless this corruption is eradicated these countries do not have a hope of achieving even a modest level of development. For example, Niall Ferguson in his introduction […]

Dr. Tom Pink: Many thanks for writing this very interesting book, which addresses questions to do with human identity and fulfilment about which I am deeply concerned myself, but from a very different starting point. To be realistic, I suspect that unfortunately not everyone here will have read the book, so I thought to begin with […]

I am very grateful and honoured that the Thomas More Institute should have asked me to speak to you tonight. I come before you in the guise of what in America is known as a public intellectual: that is to say, a person who is prepared to write upon almost any subject, without being a […]

‘Little else is requisite to carry a state to the highest degree of opulence from the lowest barbarism, but peace, easy taxes, and a tolerable administration of justice.’ Download Handout Adam Smith had it basically right when he described the essential pre-conditions for widespread economic prosperity. But if the current financial upheaval teaches us anything, […]

Why does religious freedom matter? We (or at least those of us brought up in this country) have of course all grown up in a society in which religious freedom has long been taken for granted. It is something that has been achieved by means of long struggles over the centuries. Whenever we want to […]

Linguistic Vagueness and Pluralism in Human Rights Adjudication Human rights enjoy a privileged status in western liberal democracies in that they are exempt from the majoritarian principle and handed down by unelected and generally unaccountable officials. Underlying this special status are two ideas: first, that rights safeguard values that are in some sense prior, captured by […]

It is sometimes said that the role of the Attorney General is where law and politics meet. Law and politics met also in Sir Thomas More – along with something else of course, that is, faith. Although I share his faith, the precedent is not an altogether comfortable one. Thomas More held the office of […]