This week, the CCCG will host the 2026 True Lectures featuring Jud Campbell, professor of law and the Helen L. Crocker Faculty Scholar at Stanford Law School. Across three lectures—“Natural Rights at the Founding,” “Federalism and the Decline of Natural Rights,” and “The Legacy of Natural Rights”— Campbell will examine intellectual foundations and enduring tensions of America’s constitutional tradition.
The endowed lectures, made possible by the generosity of Tad and Jennifer True, are designed to both showcase leading scholarship on American constitutionalism, and to bring that scholarship into public life. The series has already led to the publication of a forthcoming book through the University of Notre Dame Press.
Following the inaugural 2024 lectures, John Witte, Jr. of Emory University School of Law has published a major volume with Andrea Pin, The Legal Foundations of Religious Freedom: Human Rights in the United States and Europe. The book traces the evolving relationship between human rights and religious freedom in contemporary law and culture, and speaks to increasing cultural division in the Western world.
“Professor Witte’s new book is exactly what we hoped to accomplish with the True Lectures,” said Professor Vincent Phillip Muñoz, director of the CCCG. “These lectures are designed to foster serious and sustained reflection on fundamental questions of American constitutionalism, and have already generated new scholarship that is shaping our academic debate and intellectual culture.” Now available for pre-order through University of Notre Dame Press, the book brings the conversation started at the 2024 True Lectures to the wider public.
The first 2026 True Lecture will begin on Wednesday, March 18, at 3:45 p.m. in the Eck Visitors Center Auditorium, and will cover “Natural Rights at the Founding.” Thursday’s lecture on “Federalism and the Decline of Natural Rights” will take place in the 1842 Club, accessible via the Duncan Student Center at 3:30 p.m. The final lecture – on Friday, March 20 – will take place in 200 Main Building and will begin at 12:30 p.m.
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