J. Harvie Wilkinson III is a federal judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, appointed in 1984 by President Ronald Reagan. A respected conservative jurist and legal scholar, he contributed essays and reviews to The Weekly Standard on legal and constitutional topics. He is also the author of several books on law and judicial philosophy.
The Alien and Sedition Acts almost strangled the American republic shortly after its birth. Terri Diane Halperin, who teaches at the University of Richmond, has written a lucid and concise account of a controversy whose importance to American history is not to be underestimated.
Back then, it was not known as World War I, for the obvious reason that the Second World War still lay in the future. It was simply the Great War, for the world had never seen anything like it.
The death of Robert Bork this past December brought forth tributes to a man bearing no resemblance to the grotesque caricatures that emerged during the long debate over his 1987 nomination to the Supreme Court. Widely noted were his unswerving loyalty to friends and principles, his seminal…