Roundtable Discussion on Natural Law Jurisprudence at Princeton

The Cambridge Companion to Natural Law Jurisprudence

 

Princeton’s James Madison Program will host a roundtable discussion on The Cambridge Companion to Natural Law Jurisprudence, a collection of writings on the legal philosophy of natural law. George Duke and Robert P. George, editors of the companion, will participate in the discussion along with Francis J. Beckwith, Sherif Girgis, and Melissa Moschella.

Friday, December 8, 2017 • 4:00PM
Lewis Library 120, Princeton University

>>Click here to learn more about the event.

George Duke, co-editor of the Cambridge Companion to Natural Law Jurisprudence, is Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at Deakin University in Melbourne, Australia. Starting in January 2018, he will hold the rank of Associate Professor. Dr. Duke’s main research areas are the history of political thought and the philosophy of law with a focus upon natural law jurisprudence, the political and legal thought of Plato and Aristotle, and the normative foundations of political authority. He has published numerous articles on these themes in journals such as Legal TheoryLaw and PhilosophyReview of MetaphysicsBritish Journal for the History of PhilosophyHistory of Political ThoughtPolitical Studies and the Review of Politics. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Melbourne.

Robert P. George, co-editor of the Cambridge Companion to Natural Law Jurisprudence, is McCormick Chair in Jurisprudence and Director of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University. He is also the Herbert W. Vaughan senior fellow of the Witherspoon Institute and frequently a visiting professor at Harvard Law School. He has served on the United States Commission on Civil Rights, the President’s Council on Bioethics, and as Chairman of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom. He has been honored with the Presidential Citizens Medal and the Honorific Medal for Human Rights of the Republic of Poland.  He holds honorary doctorates of law, ethics, science, letters, divinity, humanities, law and moral values, civil law, humane letters, and juridical science. A graduate of Swarthmore College, he holds J.D. and M.T.S. degrees from Harvard University and the degrees of D.Phil., B.C.L., and D.C.L.  from Oxford University.

Francis J. Beckwith is Professor of Philosophy and Church-State Studies at Baylor University, where he also serves as associate director of the Ph.D. program in philosophy. He has held visiting appointments at the University of Colorado, Boulder, the University of Notre Dame, and at the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University. He is the author or co-author of over 100 academic articles, book chapters, reference entries, and reviews, among them Defending Life: A Moral and Legal Case Against Abortion Choice (Cambridge University Press, 2007), Return to Rome: Confessions of an Evangelical Catholic (Brazos Press, 2009), Politics For Christians: Statecraft As Soulcraft (IVP, 2010), A Second Look at First Things: A Case For Conservative Politics (St. Augustine’s Press, 2013), and Taking Rites Seriously: Law, Politics, and the Reasonableness of Faith (Cambridge University Press, 2015). He is winner of the American Academy of Religion’s prestigious 2016 Book Award for Excellence in the Study of Religion in Constructive-Reflective Studies. Professor Beckwith is a graduate of Washington University School of Law in St. Louis and Fordham University, where he attained his M.A. and Ph.D. in philosophy.

Sherif Girgis, Research Scholar at the Witherspoon Institute, is completing his Ph.D. in philosophy at Princeton, having just finished his J.D. at Yale Law School, where he edited the Yale Law Journal. He is coauthor of the book, What Is Marriage? Man and Woman: A Defense, cited by Justice Alito in United States v. Windsor. His latest book, coauthored with Ryan Anderson and John Corvino, is Debating Religious Liberty and Discrimination (Oxford University Press, 2017). He has spoken on moral, political, and legal issues at more than 100 lectures, conferences, and debates, and has published in academic and popular outlets including the New York Times, the Yale Law Journal, the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, the Wall Street Journal, National Review, and Commonweal. He is a 2008 Phi Beta Kappa and summa cum laude graduate of Princeton, from where he went on to earn a master’s degree in moral, political and legal philosophy from the University of Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar.

Melissa Moschella is Assistant Professor of Medical Ethics at Columbia University and Director of the Center for Biomedical Ethics in the Department of Medicine. Professor Moschella speaks and writes on a variety of contemporary moral issues, including brain death, end-of-life ethics, parental rights, reproductive technologies, and conscience rights. Her book, To Whom Do Children Belong? Parental Rights, Civic Education and Children’s Autonomy was published in 2016 by Cambridge University Press.  Her articles have been published in scholarly journals as well as popular media outlets, including Bioethics, the Journal of Medical Ethics, the Journal of Medicine and Philosophy, Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics, the American Journal of Jurisprudence, the New York Times, USA Today, the Washington Post, the New York Daily News, and Public Discourse.  She graduated magna cum laude from Harvard College and received her Ph.D. in Political Philosophy from Princeton University.

Aquinas natural law painting