Debates over natural law routinely confuse three quite different sets of issues. First, there are the properly philosophical questions of (i) whether a natural law exists, and (ii) whether positive laws are valid completely apart from their moral specifications. Second, there are questions that properly belong to political theory. These include, (iii) how a constitution ought to allocate responsibility to make natural justice effective, and (iv) how a particular system of positive law handles this issue. Third, assuming that a judiciary is limited by written law, it can still be asked whether this necessarily prohibits judicial uses of natural law theory. Questions at these different levels are sufficiently different that what it takes to solve a question at one level does not necessarily carry over to the others. It is vain, therefore, to search for a single method that brings closure on these issues.

Critics of liberalism and even some liberal theorists themselves have criticized a liberal emphasis on autonomy, because they associate autonomy with self sufficiency. That association reinforces the worst aspects of atomistic individualism: social isolation, insulation from the views of others, and a rejection of society's values and interests. But the association of autonomy with self-sufficiency is uncalled for; those who see that association are mistaken, for self-sufficiency represents not a fulfillment of autonomy but the abandonment of it. Autonomy, it is argued, has a social nature: It not only develops through sociality, but it also requires sociality for its exercise. In short, to be autonomous one must know one is autonomous; to know one is autonomous requires giving an account to others of the reasons for a decision or action. The social nature of autonomy may incline theorists to see persons as communitarian or socially situated selves. But communitarians such as Charles Taylor find the self defined in part by communal boundaries and thus see them as context-dependent. Autonomy is bounded by language, not community. It is both context-free and context-related, but not context-dependent. Liberal theorists who champion autonomy should therefore abandon any notions of selves as social atoms or isolates and build liberalism on the implications of autonomy's social nature. Part of those implications is that social institutions that foster and exercise autonomy must involve dialogue or communicative exchange. The most important and effective institutions of that kind are those of direct democracy.

Charles Taylor has developed a powerful critique of neo-Kantian liberalism and its ontological presupposition, the unencumbered self. According to Taylor, the trouble with deontological liberalism is that its neutral state is incapable of promoting the patriotic virtue that is necessary for the maintenance of liberty. This article responds to Taylor's critique by showing how the citizens of an ideal liberal state acquire a ready willingness to meet their public responsibilities in the absence of a government that promotes patriotism as a good for everyone. In particular, it draws upon Rawls's theory of justice to suggest how liberal citizens naturally develop a deep attachment to the political institutions of their community and to their fellow citizens. The concluding section of the article returns to the relationship between politics and ontology, arguing that unencumbered and situated selves are better understood as alternate moments in the life of the liberal citizen than as mutually exclusive ontological possibilities.

Recent cases suggest the Supreme Court may be moving toward a new era of open-ended judicial oversight of economic regulation. Viewed in strictly legal terms today's efforts to infuse economic individualism into the Constitution take a form different from that popularized in the laissez-faire era at the turn-of-the-century. The takings clause of the Fifth Amendment rather than the due process clause of the Fourteenth appears to be the favored vehicle. But, in the past and in the present, those who have insisted that the Constitution creates a significant check on the government's ability to regulate private economic activity consistently have relied upon two interrelated ideas to support their view. First they take the Framers' interest in protecting property to be an endorsement of a free market economic system. Secondly they argue that, because the very idea of liberty in the American tradition has included property, their version of individualism is reflected in constitutional jurisprudence from the time of John Marshall to at least the 1930s. This article explores the extent to which these two factors actually support a theory that the Constitution creates a broad and open-ended prohibition or limitation on government involvement in economic matters. Further, it will suggest that the relationship between liberty and property in the American constitutional tradition must take into consideration a third factor—the public ingredient of private property.

In the struggle between Republicans and Democrats for the black vote half a century ago, Joseph W. Martin, Jr., congressman from Massachusetts, played a major role. Using his position as Alf Landon's East Coast campaign manager (1936), minority leader (1939–1946) and chair of the Republican National Committee (1940–1942) he managed to keep the Republican party attractive to many Afro-Americans. Furthermore, the was instrumental in preventing the GOP from abandoning its traditional commitment to blacks in order to win the allegiance of Southern white conservatives. He did this by the type of campaign he conducted, the legislation and causes he supported, and the type of Afro-American he appointed to party positions. As a result it was not until the Martin approach was abandoned in the 1960s that black support for the Republican party plummeted.