Reverence for Law: Lincoln's Lyceum Address and Contemporary American Democracy

Sixty years after joining the CMC faculty, John K. Roth returns to explore how the rule of law fares in the United States as the crucial 2026 and 2028 elections approach. With American democracy endangered by corruption that uses and abuses law, Roth recalls Abraham Lincoln’s 1838 Lyceum Address, using it as a point of departure to encourage renewed commitment to reverence for law. Reverence is a virtue. As Lincoln and the nation’s founders understood, a democratic republic will not long endure if virtue, including reverence for law, is in short supply, especially among its leaders. No Athenaeum talk can solve that problem, but this one makes a start.