I am including below the text of our announcement for our symposium next spring, which will consider the theme of law and virtue. Elizabeth Kirk and I are thrilled that Professor Mary Ann Glendon will keynote the conference.
Here I want to emphasize that we are especially looking for early career scholars (with or without academic position!) to submit abstracts for this conference. If selected, we'll cover expenses and provide an honorarium. A great chance for younger scholars thinking about these questions to come and think together!
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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.