Hadley Arkes

Hadley P. Arkes (born 1940) is an American political scientist and the Edward N. Ney Professor of Jurisprudence and American Institutions at Amherst College, where he has taught since 1966.

recent articles

Life Watch: A Time for Recriminations

With the long lead times of Crisis, readers will understand when I report that this column was filed just after the impeachment of the president had failed in the Senate. By this point, it will be old news to the reader, though it is still too early to know whether Andrew Johnson will be damaged … Read more

Life Watch: Report from an Exotic Place

I used to complain that I lived in an academic enclave, the People’s Republic of Amherst, Massachusetts, a place that is in America and yet not quite of it. And I used to remark that we are not far, however, from an American consulate in Hartford, Connecticut. But in the middle of January, I was … Read more

Life Watch: Ruth and Michael—A Love Story

In a lovely September in New England, Ruthie Pakaluk, with her family and friends round her, gently slipped away and succumbed, at the age of 41, to the breast cancer that had hovered, with its peril, over several years. At the onset of her cancer, in her late 30s, she was at the beginning of … Read more

Life Watch: “What is His Name?”

During the Second World War, Josef Stalin was persistently suspicious about the motives of his Western Allies, particularly about their willingness to open a second front in Western Europe to relieve pressure on the Red Army in the East. At the conference at Teheran in 1943 Stalin forced the issue on his allies in the … Read more

Life Watch: Endgame (We Hope)

At the time this column had to be filed, the Senate had just failed once again to overturn Bill Clinton’s veto of the bill on partial birth abortion. Senator Rick Santorum, who managed the effort in the Senate, was now preparing to catch off-stride the last holdouts, the last defenders of Clinton’s position, by offering … Read more

Life Watch: Backing into Old Truths

It cannot be an accident; there must be a reason that we are drawn back, repeatedly, to that scheme unfolded by G.K. Chesterton: He imagined a story about a group of intrepid explorers, setting off from England in search of a new land. After a long while at sea, they spot land, and as they … Read more

Life Watch: The Adventures of Summer—Continued

On Saturday afternoons, in the 1940s, some of us would be at the movies, watching “adventure serials,” and each installment would begin with a quick review of the scenes, lively and portentous, that brought us to the threshold of the current crisis. And so, a recap for the reader of the adventures of this summer, … Read more

Life Watch: The New Pro-Life Hope?

I have a friend, a priest, who has come to cut a considerable figure as a public person, in letters and in politics. He writes well and often, he has a deft touch as an editor, and most improbable of all, he has a facility for drawing into a common, civil conversation—and at times even … Read more

Life Watch: Out of This Nettle, Danger

Sometime in the fall, before the elections in November, the pro-life leadership in the Congress will bring forth again the bill on partial birth abortions. The timing would be designed to point up again the willingness of President Clinton and a large segment of his party to defend these grisly procedures. But the concentration will … Read more

Life Watch — The Boerne Case: A New Barrier?

For the past several years, the leaders of virtually every pro-life group in the country have been meeting quarterly in Washington, for the sake of comparing notes. At the most recent meeting, people were pressing the question on me: What do we do apart from the bill on partial birth abortions? And what would be … Read more

Life Watch: Encore Clinton, Toujours Clinton

Miss Adelaide, in Guys and Dolls, tells her boyfriend, Nathan Detroit, that the doctor thinks her cold is “chronic.” “I don’t know about that,” says Nathan, “but it sure hangs on.” I don’t know whether Bill Clinton’s condition is chronic, but he sure hangs on. Lifewatch began in the first months of what we have … Read more

Life Watch: The Dance of Our Time

Surely it was a fetching story, bound to grip the listeners of National Public Radio: a woman of middle years, in Washington, D.C., had developed serious “rotor” problems of the shoulder. She had built a rather lucrative career for herself in the field of sado-masochism by wielding a whip every day, mostly on men who … Read more

Life Watch: Encounter in New Orleans

Not too long ago, a group of jazzmen were doing a parody of the “Folk Musician,” the kind of fellow who tunes his guitar while he explains, with folksy pretentiousness, how he happened to write this next song. And so the saxophone player explained to the audience that “This next number was inspired by an … Read more

Life Watch: After the Election—Sifting the Debris

Let’s put things in perspective: If anyone had told us, six years ago, that in 1998 the Republicans would win control of both houses of Congress, and that the majorities organizing the Congress would have a heavy preponderance of pro-lifers, we would have regarded the prophecy as a pipedream. The good news, and the sober … Read more

Life Watch: Remembering Joe Stanton

Phil Moran called from Boston to say that Joe Stanton had died. He was, for many years, like a candle blowing in the wind. He had survived polio as a youngster, and in recent years he had been in a wheel chair, and so it was a minor miracle that he had managed to be … Read more

Life Watch: After Daschle, After Newt

After Daschle—what? The question was being posed after the gambit made by Senator Thomas Daschle in May, offering an alternative to the bill on partial-birth abortions. [“Lifewatch,” July/August, 1997] Had Daschle simply been engaged in a crafty, stylish maneuver to derail a pro-life bill that was amassing, in the Congress, an unprecedented level of support? … Read more

Life Watch: The News from America

At the end of June, the Supreme Court came forth with a unanimous judgment in rejecting a “right to assisted suicide.” The decision in Washington v. Glucksberg had been expected since the oral argument months earlier had indicated rather clearly the inclinations of the justices. Still, with matters pending, I happened to leave the country … Read more

Life Watch: A Shift in the Landscape

Had something crept into the heating system of the Capitol? How else to account for the scenes we were now witnessing on the floor of the U.S. Senate in the middle of May: Senator Barbara Mikulski, hardly known for her subtlety—or any special concern for unborn children—was suddenly putting severe questions to her leader, Senator … Read more

Life Watch: My Evening with Jesse

The crowd outside Town Hall, on West 43rd street in New York, was spilling onto the street. The networks of animated conversations gave an added touch of vibrancy and color, and amplified the presence of that crowd assembled. To a passerby, it might have looked like the outside of a theater with a Broadway hit. … Read more

Life Watch: How Liberals Do Hearings

In one of those notable Far Side cartoons by Gary Larson, a cluster of cows in a field spot a car load of tourists motoring by, at which point the cows strike a proper bovine attitude, standing placidly on four legs, chewing their cud. When the car is out of sight—when they no longer need … Read more

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