His books--Postmodernism Rightly Understood, Aliens in America, Stuck with Virtue, and Homeless and at Home in America—have been widely and positively reviewed.
Lawler wrote broadly from a Catholic intellectual tradition that emphasizes the importance of limits on unfettered personal autonomy in shaping well-lived lives, as well as the centrality of the love of truth in making sense of the human experience and knowing "who we are and what we are supposed to do."
His influences include both Catholics such as Augustine, Pierre Manent, Thomas Aquinas, Pascal, Flannery O'Connor, Tocqueville and Walker Percy, as well as non-Catholic thinkers (especially Leo Strauss).
This conferences has generated several important publications, including A Political Companion to Walker Percy (edited with Brian Smith) and Descartes, Locke, Darwin, and the Science of Modern Virtue.
Lawler also became a popular and influential blogger,[citation needed] at both "Rightly Understood" at Big Think and "Postmodern Conservative," originally at First Things and then at National Review Online.
With his brother, Father Roland, and the future cardinal, Donald Wuerl, he wrote an adult catechism, The Teaching of Christ.