“Now We Know That the Law is Good”: On Law and Virtue: Fourth Annual Spring Symposium
Date
Time
Location
- Columbus School of Law
Speakers
Speaker
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Mary Ann GlendonLearned Hand Professor of Law, EmeritaMary Ann Glendon is the Learned Hand Professor of Law, emerita, at Harvard University, and a former U.S. Ambassador to the Holy See. She writes in the fields of human rights, comparative law, and political theory. Glendon chaired the U.S. State Department Commission on Unalienable Rights (2019-2020) and served as a member of the Commission on International Religious Freedom (2012-2016), and the U.S. President’s Council on Bioethics (2001-2004). She received the National Humanities Medal in 2006. In 1991 she was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She was President of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences from 2003 to 2013, a member of the Board of Supervisors of the Institute of Religious Works (Vatican Bank) from 2013 to 2018, and represented the Holy See at various conferences including the 1995 U.N. Women’s conference in Beijing where she headed the Vatican delegation. Glendon has contributed to legal and social thought in several widely translated works, bringing a comparative approach to a variety of subjects. They include The Forum and the Tower (2011), a series of biographical essays exploring the relation between political philosophy and politics-in-action; Traditions in Turmoil (2006), a collection of essays on law, culture and human rights; A World Made New: Eleanor Roosevelt and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (2001), a history of the framing of the UDHR; A Nation Under Lawyers (1996), a portrait of turbulence in the legal profession, analyzing the implications of changes in legal culture for a democratic polity that entrusts crucial roles to legally trained men and women; Rights Talk (1991), a critique of the impoverishment of political discourse; The Transformation of Family Law (1989), winner of the legal academy’s highest honor, the Order of the Coif Triennial Book Award; Abortion and Divorce in Western Law (1987), winner of the Scribes Book Award for best writing on a legal subject; The New Family and the New Property (1981), and textbooks on comparative legal traditions.
About the Event
The Center for Law and the Human Person announces the theme for its Fourth Annual Spring Symposium: “Now We Know that the Law is Good”: On Law and Virtue. The symposium will take place March 26-27, 2026 at the Catholic University of America Columbus School of Law. We are delighted to announce that Mary Ann Glendon, the Learned Hand Professor of Law emerita at Harvard University and a former U.S. Ambassador to the Holy See, will deliver the symposium’s public keynote lecture. Past speakers have included James Hankins, Yuval Levin, Catherine Pakaluk, Carter Snead, and Carl Trueman.
This age-old question of the relationship between law and virtue has become fresh and urgent once again in our time. Whether the issue is the new hunger for education, legal and otherwise, that centers on the classical and Christian values of truth, knowledge, and human well being; or the conditions of responsible and genuine citizenship in a fracturing polity; or the fundamental moral and political basis of our laws; or the question whether human character is formed by the law or instead shapes it – whether law is “downstream” of culture or the other way around – in these and countless other contexts, we see the reemergence of the perennial problem of the place of virtue in the law and in the world.
In addition to the public keynote lecture, the symposium will also feature several private sessions with scholars who will present their ideas and research. Our aim is to bring together a community of scholars concerned about the disintegration of law, politics, and morality, and who are committed to a rediscovery of classical virtues and a rebuilding of legal and political institutions necessary to cultivating those virtues in lawyers and citizens.
Interested scholars from a range of academic specialties are encouraged to submit an abstract about a topic germane to the symposium’s themes. We particularly encourage early career scholars to submit abstracts. Scholars whose proposals are accepted will be developed into short essays, and will be commented on at the symposium by distinguished scholars in an environment conducive to deep and candid intellectual exchange and to more intimate and collegial collaboration.
Please submit abstracts of no more than 500 words to the Center’s co-directors, Marc DeGirolami (degirolami@cua.edu) and Elizabeth Kirk (kirke@cua.edu) by September 2, 2025. Notification of acceptance will be e-mailed by October 1, 2025. For each selected presenter, the Center for Law and the Human Person will offer an honorarium and cover reasonable travel and accommodation expenses.
