Adam J. MacLeod is the Center for Law and Human Person’s Matthew Hale Faculty Fellow. He is a Professor of Law and Co-Associate Dean for Faculty Research at The Catholic University of America, and a Fellow at the Center for Law and the Human Person. He was previously Professor of Law and Katherine A. Ryan Chair at St. Mary’s University and, before that, Professor of Law at Faulkner University, where students twice named him Professor of the Year. He has been a visiting fellow in the James Madison Program at Princeton University and research fellow at George Mason University. He serves as Senior Fellow of the Center for Religion, Culture and Democracy.
Professor MacLeod explains why he chose “Matthew Hale” as the title of his fellowship:
“Matthew Hale was a Christian jurist in the comprehensive sense. A scholar of the entire common law and equity, he showed generations of lawyers how to discern reason and order within the customary law of England. His treatises taught English lawyers and, by extension, their American students, to understand the law as a coherent whole ordered to a common good. He also studied theology and philosophy, and in his writings he appealed to natural law principles and Christian teachings to vindicate fundamental legal doctrines that we today take for granted, such as the presumption of innocence, the right to make use of property when necessary to preserve human life, and the public’s right to transit a navigable strait. As a lawyer, he defended unpopular causes. As a public servant, he took up the duties of some of England’s most important judicial and legislative offices during a very troubled time in England’s history. Famously unwilling to take a bribe or tolerate judicial activism, Hale insisted that all judges must obey the law to satisfy not only their duty toward their fellow citizens but also their duty to God.”
