"The James Wilson Fellowship's focus on the natural rights approach to the law is both inspiring and pioneering alike.  The Fellowship was crafted to complete the legal education of jurists and law students.  Crystallizing the linkages between the logic of morals and law and a principled approach to adjudication, the Fellowship makes a most wonderful and invaluable contribution to our Nation.  It also strives to give us a jurisprudence of coherence and reason that is faithful to the rules laid down at the Framing.  These are all excellent gifts of the Fellowship.  In the end, it is the generous, productive and highly instructive teaching moments of the Fellowship's leaders that make a world of constructive difference.  For this and for so much more, I am indebted to the Fellowship."

“The James Wilson Seminars are virtually unique in the academic world. Not only are they always devoted to what may be the most important question in American law—the relation of natural law to contemporary legal questions—but they also consistently bring together essentially the same set of scholars and judges, which allows the participants to have a much more substantive, serious, and sophisticated conversation, a conversation extended over time in an ongoing pursuit of the truth. These seminars are the most important conferences I attend.”

“The lessons I've learned here, the friendships that I've made, and the thoughts that were provoked, are all things I'm really looking forward to bringing with me to the next stage of my career.”

"My time with the James Wilson Institute has had a profound impact on my work with Americans United for Life (AUL). The fellowship is about restoring to a new generation of lawyers, judges, and citizens the understanding of the American Founders about the first principles of our law and the moral grounds of their own rights, the core of things. By participating in the James Wilson Institute fellowship, I was able to deepen my understanding of the foundational principles of our nation, the "laws of Nature and reason," central to which is the intrinsic right to life of every human being, from conception to natural death. At AUL, we work daily to craft and enact laws based on first principles, rejecting the moral incoherence of abortion, and building a right society in which everyone is welcomed in life and protected in law. Through my time with the James Wilson Institute, I have both the background and the tradecraft needed to lead the team in doing just that."

"The JWI Fellowship represents a truly unique experience in exploring the fundamental questions of constitutional governance that affect the everyday decisions of lawyers, judges, citizens and politicans alike. As someone who has been through the law academy, I can confidently say that there is a deficiency in law schools generally. Studying with some of the brightest minds in the professsion, as well as some of the brightest peers I have yet to encounter, has profoundly shaped my way going forward."

JWI is unique and emphasizes thought processes that were completely new to me this week. I think I have come out of this week a different lawyer than I entered it. I don’t think you can give anything in the legal sphere higher praise than that you came out thinking differently than how you came in.

Natural law scholars start from the assumption that law exists and therefore it has to have a nature. It is from that nature that we can then cabin what we do to be sure that we are faithful to it. There are many legal scholars, especially among conservatives, that take seriously the existence of the natural law, but they’re not sure how to apply it. The James Wilson Institute brings that down to earth and explains how a commitment to the reality of law can be applied. It provides a framework, and lawyers need frameworks. It's very good at bringing things down to brass tacks.