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In Pursuit of Virtue and Knowledge, Catholic Law’s Center for Law and the Human Person Hosts Inaugural Conference

On Tuesday, March 14, 2023, the Center for Law and the Human Person (CLHP) at The Catholic University of America Columbus School of Law (Catholic Law) hosted its inaugural conference entitled, “Rightly Order Law and the Flourishing of the Human Person.” The conference opened with remarks by Stephen C. Payne, Catholic Law’s Dean and Knights of Columbus Professor of Law, followed by an introduction by CLHP Director, Elizabeth Kirk. Introducing the general theme of the conference, Kirk emphasized the role that law can and should play in orienting the human person toward virtue and fulfilling his given end. Kirk also cited Pope Saint John Paul II in observing that law must respect and protect human dignity or it risks subjecting persons to manipulation and violation.

Marc O. DeGirolami, Cary Fields Professor of Law, St. John’s University School of Law, provided the conference’s first presentation, “Notes on a New Humanism in Legal Education.” Reflecting on his experience as a law professor, DeGirolami argued that law schools should offer their students opportunities to study humanistic studies such as philosophy and theology. “About five years ago, I began to notice something in my students,” he remarked. “They have their intuitions. They know, or think they know, what they think, but they keep quiet because they don’t know how to approach disagreement.” Humanism and the study of law can and should co-exist, he explained. Law should facilitate human flourishing, and the humanities advance that goal by providing law students with opportunities for shaping themselves and becoming more fully human. DeGirolami posited that legal education could better challenge its students by using the humanities to prompt further exploration of human nature.

Following DeGirolami, Mary Graw Leary, Senior Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, Catholic Law, contrasted the way in which law teaches human dignity with one way in which law has failed to protect that dignity. Graw Leary’s lecture was entitled, “It’s Expensive to End Slavery: The Need for Forced Labor Laws to Reflect the Value of Human Life.” She addressed the continued exploitation of children through forced labor throughout the world, declaring, “We are in the midst of a social movement—and in my opinion, we are losing it.” She observed that a social movement often achieves its specific goal when it successfully does three things: educates the public on the harm of the target vice, enacts law in furtherance of the movement, and develops a stigma attached to engaging in the target vice. Graw Leary offered as one example of a successful movement the campaign against drunk driving, which evolved from a common occurrence to a disgraceful taboo. She then identified the failure of child labor opponents to adequately develop a stigma against exploitatively placing vulnerable children in brutal jobs. “We are at an inflection point,” Graw Leary remarked. “History will view this period as either a raising up of human dignity, or a continuance of child labor exploitation.”

Expanding on Graw Leary’s exposition of a stigma’s power, lecturer Elizabeth Schiltz, Herrick Professor of Law, University of St. Thomas (St. Paul, MN), focused on “The Discordant Notions of Human Dignity Undermining the Aspirations of Disability Law.” Schiltz explored the educative function of law, in which law shapes the conduct of individuals and society, in the context of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). Schiltz described the dissonance between the anthropological foundation of the protective measures promulgated by the ADA and the visible reality of those affected by the ADA. The notion of human dignity underlying the ADA assumes that such dignity derives from autonomy and the related capacity to reason and choose independently. A sizeable number of people with disabilities, however, suffer from infirmities that impair their capacity for autonomy and reasoned decision-making. As result, Schiltz concluded, protections of persons with disabilities should seek not necessarily to empower autonomy but to assist those persons in their current and real contexts. Those protections should recognize that one’s dignity does not arise only from autonomy and individuality but also from recognizing one’s vulnerability and dependence on others and God.

As the afternoon lectures concluded, the evening festivities began with a Mass celebrated in Catholic University’s St. Vincent de Paul Chapel by University Chaplain Fr. Aquinas Guilbeau, O.P. In his homily, Fr. Guilbeau reminded participants that rightly ordered law requires lawmakers who are rightly ordered persons, who in turn must rely on grace to aid their continued commitment to the good. Following the Mass, a banquet was held in Catholic Law’s Louise H. Keelty and James Keelty, Jr. Atrium, with Dr. Peter K. Kilpatrick, President of The Catholic University of America, in attendance.

Following dinner, Kilpatrick introduced keynote speaker Carter Snead, Director of the de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture and Professor of Law at the University of Notre Dame. “The most important thing we do at a Catholic university is help human persons learn who they are,” Kilpatrick remarked. Snead then delivered a lecture entitled, “Anthropology: The Indispensable Tool for Grasping and Shaping Law.” Snead criticized the “vision of human flourishing [that] anchors and animates [much] law and policy” as based on expressive individualism—an anthropological framework that seeks to establish conditions for human flourishing that in reality aid the most privileged. He suggested a corrective anthropology based on mutual dependence and vulnerability, through which human persons may recognize their ultimate purpose as creatures drawn toward love and friendship.

Director Kirk concluded the conference by explaining the elements of the Center’s new logo, depicting the human person as imago Dei and guided by the light of law. Kirk also thanked the many individuals who had contributed to the success of the inaugural conference.

Click here to view a recording of the event.

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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 De Girolami

Marc O. De Girolami 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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