The Truth about Built Better Than They Knew Studies

Abstract This essay will articulate Lawler’s understanding of the significance of “Built Better Than They Knew Studies” or what he also later referred to as “America’s Constitutional Thomism” to show how this approach best demonstrates the truth about America. “Built Better Than They Knew Studies” is the attempt to demonstrate that America’s constitutional order was not exclusively built on modern ideological formulations but was a proper political achievement rooted in the rich ensemble of truths in the Western constitutional tradition. Three thinkers loom large in explaining its merits for American constitutionalism: Alexis de Tocqueville, Orestes A. Brownson, and John Courtney Murray, S.J. Joining together their contributions is the notion that while the American founding was an incredible achievement, it was the handiwork of human beings, and like anything else it had, amidst its merits, certain problems and deficiencies. The task is for American citizens to bring out the full truth in their republican citizenship and relational lives in civil society.