Editor’s note: This piece was originally headlined, “The New Chief, the New Justice, and the New Court,” with the subhead: “Liberals are right to worry.” It ran as the cover story of our October 1986 issue. Say this, at least,…

Even before the Supreme Court ended its last term in early July, media pundits had reached a verdict on its significance: The Court had lurched to the right. As usual, Anthony Lewis of the New York Times gave the charge…

Intellectuals and Society By Thomas Sowell (Basic Books, 398 pages, $29.95) IRVING KRISTOL ONCE DEFINED an intellectual as someone who “knows a little bit about everything.” And, as he was quick to add, he did not mean that disparagingly. Thomas…

The Citizen’s Constitution: An Annotated Guide By Seth Lipsky (Basic Books, 336 Pages, $25.95) This is an improbable book. But Seth Lipsky seems to specialize in improbable projects. In the 1990s, he revived a hundred-year-old Yiddish-language newspaper by creating an…

Is freedom of speech in America threatened by the political mobilization of Islam? People who warn about threats to free speech usually like to shout about them—perhaps to show that they themselves won’t submit to threats. I don’t think America…

IN THE PAST, freedom was often conceived as an attribute of persons. The free man could exercise free thought and free will. He was the opposite of the slave—of the man enslaved by others, or the man enslaved by his…