What Makes Laws Just? An Introduction to the Natural Law Tradition I Fr. Dominic Legge, O.P.

Fr. Dominic Legge delves into the philosophical and moral considerations that determine whether laws are truly just, highlighting the ongoing relevance of these questions in contemporary society.

This lecture was given on March 26th, 2025, at Harvard University.

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About the Speaker:

Fr. Dominic Legge is the Director of the Thomistic Institute and Associate Professor in Systematic Theology at the Pontifical Faculty of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C.  He is an Ordinary Member of the Pontifical Academy of St. Thomas Aquinas, and holds a J.D. from Yale Law School, a Ph.L. from the School of Philosophy of the Catholic University of America, and a doctorate in Sacred Theology from the University of Fribourg in Switzerland. He entered the Order of Preachers in 2001, after having practiced constitutional law for several years as a trial attorney for the U.S. Department of Justice. He has also taught at The Catholic University of America Law School and at Providence College. He is the author of The Trinitarian Christology of St. Thomas Aquinas (Oxford University Press, 2017).

Keywords: Aristotelian Philosophy, Catholic Ethics, Contemporary Legal Theory, Incarnation, John Finnis, Jurisprudence, Natural Law Tradition, Saint Augustine, Summa Theologiae, The Metaphysics of Morals