St. John Henry Newman, Tradition, and Law

Date

October 17, 2024 - October 18, 2024

Time

All Day

Location

  • Columbus School of Law
  • Room 256
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Speakers

Speakers

  • Marc DeGirolami
    Marc DeGirolami St. John Henry Newman Professor of Law
    Marc DeGirolami
    Marc DeGirolami
    St. John Henry Newman Professor of Law
  • Jennifer Frey
    Jennifer Frey Dean of the Honors College and Professor of Philosophy, University of Tulsa
    Jennifer Frey
    Jennifer Frey
    Dean of the Honors College and Professor of Philosophy, University of Tulsa

    Jennifer Frey, PhD, is currently serving as Dean of the Honors College at the University of Tulsa, with a secondary appointment as professor of philosophy in the Department of Philosophy and Religion. Previously, she was an associate professor of philosophy at the University of South Carolina, where she was also a Peter and Bonnie McCausland faculty fellow in the College of Arts and Sciences. Her academic research is primarily in moral psychology and virtue, and her two latest book projects are on practical wisdom and practical truth. She hosts a philosophy, theology, and literature podcast called Sacred and Profane Love.

  • Fr. Juan Velez
    Fr. Juan Velez Priest of the Prelature of Opus Dei
    Fr. Juan Velez
    Fr. Juan Velez
    Priest of the Prelature of Opus Dei

    Fr. Juan R. Vélez is a priest of the Prelature of Opus Dei. He was a board-certified internist. He obtained a doctorate in dogmatic theology from the University of Navarra. He is author of nine journal articles on St. John Henry Newman and various books, including Holiness in a Secular Age, the Witness of Cardinal Newman (Scepter Publishers, 2017). He is also editor of A Guide to John Henry Newman, His Life and Thought (CUAP, 2022).

  • Matthew Levering
    Matthew Levering James N. Jr. and Mary D. Perry Chair of Theology, Mundelein Seminary
    Matthew Levering
    Matthew Levering
    James N. Jr. and Mary D. Perry Chair of Theology, Mundelein Seminary

    Matthew Levering holds the James N. Jr. and Mary D. Perry Chair of Theology at Mundelein Seminary. The author of over thirty books, he serves as co-editor of two quarterly journals, Nova et Vetera and International Journal of Systematic Theology. He is the Senior Editor of Word on Fire’s new academic quarterly, The New Ressourcement. His books include Newman on Doctrinal Corruption, Biblical Natural Law, and (co-authored with David Novak and Anver Emon) Natural Law: A Jewish, Christian, and Islamic Trialogue.

  • Austin Walker
    Austin Walker Associate Director and a Scholar-in-Residence, Lumen Christi Institute
    Austin Walker
    Austin Walker
    Associate Director and a Scholar-in-Residence, Lumen Christi Institute

    Austin Walker is Associate Director and a Scholar-in-Residence at the Lumen Christi Institute. He directs LCI’s University Program, where he oversees the presentation of the Church’s intellectual tradition on the University of Chicago campus. He also directs LCI’s Cultural Forum, where he supervises the articulation of the Church’s mind on questions of the day for a lay Catholic audience. He leads LCI’s Executive Great Books seminar series and serves as an instructor at the University of Chicago’s Graham School Basic Program of Liberal Education. In 2022, he received a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago’s prestigious Committee on Social Thought, where he wrote on John Henry Newman’s political philosophy. He holds M.A.’s from the University of Chicago and the University of Mississippi. He received a B.A. with highest honors in Classical Languages from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. From 2007 to 2011, he taught in the Mississippi Delta for the Mississippi Teacher Corps, where he received the Andrew P. Mullins Jr. Award in 2009. He and his wife have three young children.

  • Jennifer Newsome Martin
    Jennifer Newsome Martin John J. Cavanaugh Associate Professor of the Program of Liberal Studies, Associate Professor in the Department of Theology, Director of the de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture, University of Notre Dame
    Jennifer Newsome Martin
    Jennifer Newsome Martin
    John J. Cavanaugh Associate Professor of the Program of Liberal Studies, Associate Professor in the Department of Theology, Director of the de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture, University of Notre Dame

    Jennifer Newsome Martin is the John J. Cavanaugh Associate Professor of the Program of Liberal Studies, Associate Professor in the Department of Theology, and the Director of the de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture at the University of Notre Dame. She is a systematic theologian with areas of interest in 19th and 20th century Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox thought, trinitarian theology, theological aesthetics, religion and literature, ressourcement theology, and the nature of religious tradition. Her first book, Hans Urs von Balthasar and the Critical Appropriation of Russian Religious Thought (University of Notre Dame Press), was one of ten winners internationally of the 2017 Manfred Lautenschlaeger Award for Theological Promise. Over twenty articles and book chapters have appeared in such venues as Modern Theology, Communio: International Catholic Review, The Newman Studies Journal, International Journal of Systematic Theology, and in a number of edited volumes and collections of essays. She serves on the editorial boards of Religion & Literature, Theological Studies, and the University of Notre Dame Press.

  • Michael Moreland
    Michael Moreland University Professor of Law and Religion and Director of the Eleanor H. McCullen Center for Law, Religion and Public Policy, Villanova University
    Michael Moreland
    Michael Moreland
    University Professor of Law and Religion and Director of the Eleanor H. McCullen Center for Law, Religion and Public Policy, Villanova University
  • Jeffrey Pojanowski
    Jeffrey Pojanowski Biolchini Family Professor of Law
    Jeffrey Pojanowski
    Jeffrey Pojanowski
    Biolchini Family Professor of Law
  • Matthew Walther
    Matthew Walther Editor of The Lamp, and Contributor to the New York Times
    Matthew Walther
    Matthew Walther
    Editor of The Lamp, and Contributor to the New York Times

About the Event

St. John Henry Newman was canonized as a saint in the Catholic Church on October 13, 2019. He was a man of incomparable ability and range: theologian, scholar, philosopher, poet, and essayist. This conference considers Cardinal Newman’s contributions to the law. In particular, it studies his ideas concerning doctrine and its development in theology and how these relate to law, as well as his profound reflections on the nature and aims of the university and what these suggest for the role and function of the university, including the law school, today. These may both be described as variations on the great leitmotiv of tradition that runs like a mighty river through Cardinal Newman’s thought, and they each illuminate something vital and foundational about law. The conference brings together theologians, philosophers, and legal scholars—in the spirit of learning and inquiry that Cardinal Newman might himself have welcomed—to explore these timeless and enduring questions.

Schedule

Thursday, October 17

4:45 pm: Welcome

5:00-6:00 pm: Keynote Address, Jennifer Newsome Martin, “To Ponder All These Things: University Education, Tradition, and the Imitatio Mariae,”  University of Notre Dame (Theology)

6:00-7:00 pm: Reception

7:30 pm: Dinner for invited guests


Friday, October 18

8:00 am: Morning Mass

9:00-9:30 am: Breakfast

9:30 am: Welcome

9:45-10:45 am: Chair Lecture, Marc O. DeGirolami, “The Very Idea of Tradition in the Law,” The Catholic University of America (Law), 

10:45-11:00 pm: Coffee Break

11:00-12:15 pm: Panel #1—“Doctrine and Development in Theology and Law”

  • Jennifer Frey, University of Tulsa (Dean, Honors College) (Philosophy)
  • Jeffrey Pojanowski, University of Notre Dame (Law) (panel chair)
  • Juan R. Vélez, Editor of “A Guide to John Henry Newman: His Life and Thought” (2023) (Theology)


12:15-1:30 pm: Lunchtime Address, Matthew Walther, “‘Odious and Shocking Mysteries’: John Henry Newman’s Life in the Law,” Editor of “The Lamp”

1:30-1:45 pm: Coffee break

1:45-3:00 pm: Panel #2—“Faith and Knowledge in the University”

  • Matthew Levering, University of St. Mary of the Lake (Theology)
  • Michael Moreland, University of Villanova (Law) (panel chair)
  • Austin Walker, The Lumen Christi Institute (Philosophy)

3:00 pm: Concluding remarks

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Joshua Gaeng

Joshua Gaeng is the Operations Assistant for the Center for the Constitution and the Catholic Intellectual Tradition. He recently graduated from Ave Maria University, with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Philosophy and Theology, with a focus on Thomism. During his undergraduate studies, he was captain of the varsity soccer team, a member of the Thomistic Institute campus chapter, served on the leadership team for the St. Joseph’s Men’s Group, volunteered as a faith mentor, and graduated magna cum laude with Dean’s List honors.

Carol McHale

Carol McHale is the Director of Operations for the Law School Centers. She has an undergraduate degree from the University of Pittsburgh and a master’s degree from the Indiana University of Pennsylvania. She had a career as a computer instructor and technical writer for the Brookings Institution as well as being an adjunct faculty member at Strayer University and Northern Virginia Community College before she became a full time mother for her 8 children. After being home for 20 years, she returned to work at The Catholic University of America.

St. John Henry Newman, Tradition, and Law

St. John Henry Newman, Tradition, and Law

Will Haun

Will Haun is Senior Counsel at the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, a nonprofit, nonpartisan law firm that defends religious liberty for all faith traditions. He is also a nonresident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute where he focuses on constitutional law. In law practice, Will has represented religious institutions, current and former elected officials, and businesses in courts nationwide, particularly in the U.S. Supreme Court and federal appellate courts. His writing on law and religion appears in various popular and scholarly publications, and he speaks on those topics at major universities. In addition to working at two international law firms, Will clerked for Judge Janice Rogers Brown on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and Judge Claude M. Hilton on the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. He received his J.D., cum laude, from the Catholic University of America, Columbus School of Law, where he was a published member of the Law Review. He received his B.A. in political science, cum laude, from American University. He is a Knight of Merit in the Sacred Military Constantinian Order of St. George.

Carter Snead

Carter Snead is the Charles E. Rice Professor of Law and the Director of the de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture at Notre Dame Law School. Professor Snead is one of the world’s leading experts on public bioethics with extensive research that explores issues relating to neuroethics, enhancement, human embryo research, assisted reproduction, abortion, and end-of-life decision-making. Professor Snead received his J.D. from Georgetown University and his B.A. degree from St. John’s College in Annapolis, Maryland.

Lucia Silecchia

Lucia Silecchia is the Associate Dean of Faculty Research and a Professor of Law who has taught at Catholic University’s Columbus School of Law since 1991. Professor Silecchia has written extensively in the areas of environmental law and ethics, elder law, Catholic social thought, legal education, law and literature, and legal writing. In December, 2016, she began service as an Expert to the Permanent Observer Mission of the Holy See to the United Nations, assisting on matters related to the elderly, people with disabilities and ecology. Professor Silecchia received her J.D. from Yale Law School. And her B.A. degree from Queens College (C.U.N.Y.).

Luis Perez

Luis J. Perez is a Partner at McDermott, Will & Emery in its Miami office and focuses his practice on mergers and acquisitions and corporate governance matters, including international transactions, for clients operating throughout the United States and Latin America. Mr. Perez is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and is also a senior editor for the Harvard Advanced Leadership Initiative Social Impact Review. He received his J.D. from The Catholic University of America, Columbus School of Law and his B.A. degree from Rollins College.

Michael Moreland

Michael Moreland is University Professor of Law and Religion and director of the Eleanor H. McCullen Center for Law, Religion and Public Policy at Villanova University Charles Widger School of Law where he has taught numerous courses including Torts, Evidence, Bioethics and the Law, Advanced Torts, Constitutional Law II, Justice and Rights, and seminars in Law and Religion. As a renowned scholar in these fields, Professor Moreland has published articles in leading legal, public policy, and medical journals, and his chapters on law, ethics and religion have been featured in numerous books, including titles published by Cambridge University Press and Oxford University Press. Professor Moreland received his J.D. from the University of Michigan Law School, his M.A. and Ph.D. in theological ethics from Boston College, and his B.A. degree in philosophy from the University of Notre Dame.

Veryl Miles

Veryl Victoria Miles teaches Consumer Bankruptcy and Commercial Law courses at the Catholic University of America, Columbus School of Law, where she was previously Dean from 2005-2012. Much of her extensive scholarship has been devoted to the subject of consumer bankruptcy law as well as a range of issues regarding legal education and admission to the bar. Professor Miles is a graduate of Wells College in Aurora, New York, and received her J.D. from The Catholic University of America, Columbus School of Law.

Rev. Aquinas Guilbeau, O.P.

Rev. Aquinas Guilbeau, O.P., is University Chaplain and Director of Campus Ministry at The Catholic University of America. He previously taught moral theology of the Dominican House of Studies and served as Prior of the Priory of the Immaculate Conception in Washington D.C.. Father Aquinas’s scholarship focuses on Thomas Aquinas and the common good. He entered the Dominican Province of St. Joseph in 2005, and after several years of pastoral work, received his doctorate at the University of Fribourg (Switzerland).

David Crawford

David S. Crawford is Dean and Associate Professor of Moral Theology and Family Law at the Pontifical John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family at The Catholic University of America. Dr. Crawford’s research has focused on natural law, gender identity, homosexuality, and the anthropological implications of modern civil law. He has an S.T.D., S.T.L., and M.T.S. from the Pontifical John Paul II Institute, a J.D. from University of Michigan Law School, an M.A. in writing from the University of Iowa, and B.A. from the University of Iowa.

Gerard V. Bradley

Gerard V. Bradley is professor of law at the University of Notre Dame, where he teaches Legal Ethics and Constitutional Law. He serves on the editorial board of the American Journal of Jurisprudence, which he formerly co-edited. Professor Bradley’s scholarly work focuses on the intersection of religious liberty, Catholic social teaching, and American law. He has written many books including Unquiet Americans: U.S. Catholics and America’s Common Good (St. Augustine’s Press, 2019). He received his B.A. and J.D. from Cornell University.

Erika Bachiochi

Erika Bachiochi is a Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center and a Senior Fellow at the Abigail Adams Institute. Her scholarship focuses on feminist legal theory, Catholic social teaching, and Equal Protection jurisprudence. Ms. Bachiochi’s most recent book, The Rights of Women: Reclaiming a Lost Vision, published by University of Notre Dame Press in 2021, was a finalist for the Intercollegiate Studies Institute’s Conservative Book of the Year Award. She has edited two other books, and her writings have appeared in publications such as the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, The New York Times, and The Atlantic. Ms. Bachiochi has a J.D. from Boston University School of Law, an M.A. from Boston College, and a B.A. from Middlebury College.

Helen Alvaré

Helen M. Alvaré is the Robert A. Levy Endowed Chair in Law and Liberty at Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University, where she teaches Family Law, Property Law, and Law and Religion. Her research focuses on marriage, parenting, non-marital households, and freedom of religion. She has published several books including Religious Freedom After the Sexual Revolution: A Catholic Guide with Catholic University of America Press in 2022, and Putting Children’s Interests First in American Family Law and Policy: With Power Comes Responsibility with Cambridge University Press in 2017. In addition to her scholarship, Professor Alvaré is a member of the Holy See’s Dicastery for Laity, Family, and Life and a board member of Catholic Relief Services. She holds a J.D. from Cornell University School of Law, an M.A. in Systematic Theology from Catholic University of America, and a B.S. from Villanova University.

William Rooney

William H. Rooney is the Lumen Legis Fellow of the Center for Law and the Human Person and a Lecturer at the Columbus School of Law at The Catholic University of America. His primary areas of scholarship and teaching are law in the Catholic intellectual tradition and antitrust law. Mr. Rooney aspires to contribute to the Center in collaboration with students, scholars, and practitioners and through his experience in philosophy, law, and economics. He is especially interested in studying the human person as the imago Dei who receives the light of all law from God, the Eternal Light, Creator, and Lawgiver. Mr. Rooney has been a lifelong student of the Catholic intellectual tradition and its intersection with law and economics. He has an M.A. in Philosophy from Holy Apostles College and Seminary, a J.D. from Yale Law School, a Diploma in Law from the University of Oxford, and a B.A. from the University of Notre Dame. Mr. Rooney is a former partner of Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP and former co-head of Willkie’s Antitrust Practice Group and practiced antitrust law for over 30 years. Mr. Rooney is a Trustee of the Dietrich von Hildebrand Legacy Project and has collaborated with the Collegium and the Portsmouth Institutes.

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Louis Brown

Louis Brown is the Center’s Associate Director. Brown received a Juris Doctorate from Howard University School of Law. After law school, he first worked as a private practice attorney for a firm where he practiced labor law and commercial litigation. He later served as associate director of social concerns for a state Catholic conference. While at the conference, among other efforts, he advocated for life-affirming health care policy, co-led a legislative coalition in favor of housing non-discrimination legislation, advocated for in-state tuition for undocumented immigrants, and sought to protect the social safety net for the poor. Brown went on to become a Congressman’s legislative counsel and his liaison to the U.S. House Committee on the Judiciary. He also served as the Congressman’s primary health care staffer. 

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Marc DeGirolami

Marc O. DeGirolami is the inaugural St. John Henry Newman Professor of Law and Co-Director of the Center for Law and the Human Person. His publications include The Tragedy of Religious Freedom (Harvard University Press) and articles in the Yale Law Journal, Notre Dame Law Review, Washington University Law Review, Constitutional Commentary, Legal Theory, and the Boston College Law Review, among others. Before joining the Columbus School of Law in 2024, he was the Cary Fields Professor of Law and the Co-Director of the Mattone Center for Law and Religion at St. John’s Law School. He has also been a Visiting Professor and Visiting Fellow at Princeton University’s Department of Politics, as well as a Visiting Professor at Notre Dame Law School and The Catholic University of America Columbus School of Law. His professional experience includes service as an Assistant District Attorney in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

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Elizabeth Kirk

Elizabeth Kirk is the Center’s Co-Director and Assistant Professor of Law at The Catholic University of America Columbus School of Law. She joined the Columbus School of Law after serving as the Director and Kowalski Chair of Catholic Thought at the Institute for Faith and Culture at the St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas. From 2005 to 2010, she served as the Associate Director of the Notre Dame Center for Ethics and Culture, an interdisciplinary center inspired by the teachings of St. Pope John Paul II and dedicated to bringing the Catholic moral, intellectual and cultural tradition to bear upon the formation of students. From 2012 to 2016, Kirk served as a resident fellow in cultural and legal studies at the Stein Center for Social Research at Ave Maria University.

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