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When Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio became pope in March 2013, it seemed promising that he was from what he, as Pope Francis, would call “the peripheries.” His election was expressive...

This month in Bali, Indonesia, the G20 Summit held its first annual Religion Forum, the “R20.” On November 2 and 3, over four hundred Hindu, Buddhist, Shinto, Jewish, Christian,...

When Eleanor Roosevelt and a small group of people gathered at the behest of the U.N. in early 1947 to draft the world’s first “international bill of rights,” they...

Longtime readers of First Things may recall that the April 1998 issue featured a nuanced statement “On Human Rights” by the Ramsey Colloquium, a diverse group of Christian and...

It’s hard to imagine a decent politics that doesn’t depend on the notion of the dignity of the human person. It’s unfortunately also hard to specify how to anchor...

In her 1958 autobiography, Eleanor Roosevelt described an occasion in the early days of the U.N. Human Rights Commission when she invited three key players to her Washington Square...

More rare than athletes who have played both baseball and football in the major leagues are individuals who have achieved great distinction in both politics and philosophy, the vocations...

When I received a letter from Dr. Wanda Franz telling me about the “Proudly Pro-Life Award,” I was, quite simply, overcome with emotion. There is no honor or award...

April 27, 2009 The Rev. John I. Jenkins, C.S.C. President University of Notre Dame Dear Father Jenkins, When you informed me in December 2008 that I had been selected...

April 27, 2009 The Rev. John I. Jenkins, C.S.C. President University of Notre Dame Dear Father Jenkins, When you informed me in December 2008 that I had been selected...

As Max Weber observed in Politics as a Vocation and Science as a Vocation—and as borne out by his own unsuccessful forays into political life—the qualities that make a...

Given the close relation between a country’s law and its culture, it is only to be expected that there will be considerable variation in the way legal systems conceptualize...

Not for the first time, the world finds itself in an age of great movements of peoples. And once again, the United States is confronted with the challenge of...

I Am Charlotte Simmons by Tom Wolfe Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 646 pp. $28.95 When the heroine of I Am Charlotte Simmons ”a smart, beautiful, small-town girl”sits down to...

Discovering Our Dependence by Mary Ann Glendon When Otto von Bismarck established the world’s first social security system, he never dreamed that a large proportion of the populace would...