Latest article is now out! For this special issue on "Law and Order," I explore the (surprisingly understudied) history of the Red Mass tradition in the US and explain why the tradition emerged in Boston during the Second World War. Accessible at: muse.jhu.edu/issue/51705

In 2021, I was asked to work on a book about character formation and leadership. Many trips to Newport, RI, and @PenguinRandom’s HQ later, it’s finally publication day! Congratulations to Josiah Bunting on this achievement, and enormous thanks for his friendship and mentorship.

Great to see the 2023 @CTSTheology annual volume now out from Orbis Books. My chapter illustrates why and how mid-century Catholic intellectuals used modern communication mediums to share ideas about natural law with everyday Americans, both Catholic and non-Catholic.

Looking forward to returning to Boston College this summer for the Institute for Advanced Jesuit Studies Symposium on Jesuit Studies. I'll be sharing some new research on the institutional and theoretical architecture of 20th-century American Catholic legal thought. Program: shorturl.at/pvDKX

How did debates about Legal Realism and natural law shape the most influential Catholic statement on civil rights in the 20th century? In the new issue of Journal of Catholic Social Thought, I begin to tell the story of Pedro Arrupe's 1967 'On the Interracial Apostolate': shorturl.at/MWXZ7.

Thanks to the support of @ASLHTweets, I'm thrilled to be convening the ASLH/ND Graduate Legal History Colloquium next year. We'll meet in South Bend and Chicago, with virtual participation options for those who can't join us in person. Registration: shorturl.at/jmMS3

Grateful to be one of the 2024 Littleton-Griswold Research Grant awardees (for "research in U.S. legal history and in the general field of law and society"). Thanks, @AHAHistorians, for the support!

Catholic legal history en route to Organization of American Historians! Excited to be joining @PeteCajka, Maggie Elmore (Baylor University), and Justin Poche (@Holy_Cross) to discuss Catholic lawyers and social science in the 1950s/60s. Thanks to The University of Chicago's Omar McRoberts and Joel Isaac for chairing and commenting!

Delighted to be in this wonderful new issue. Breaking with a few decades of scholarship on John Courtney Murray, I argue that the late American Jesuit is best understood as a Thomist who drew on distinctly Augustinian ideas about the City of Man's relationship to the City of God.

Interesting new paper by @CaseyCo231, forthcoming in Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy 🇺🇸, on past "natural law moment(s)" in American and Irish legal history: shorturl.at/lYuO4. Glad to see my 2024 chapter on natural law and mid-century media (for @CTSTheology/Orbis Books) mentioned.

Excited (if trepidatious!) to share my first piece of legal scholarship on the role of church history in First Amendment adjudication: shorturl.at/WOuyL. Forthcoming in @NYUJLL this fall and subject to revision in light of ongoing litigation, so comments are welcome!

Thanks to the Notre Dame Law School Program on Church, State & Society for this recognition of my forthcoming article in the Journal of Law and Religion on the forgotten history of the 1960 Oliver Wendell Holmes Devise Lectures. A (mostly completed) draft is available on SSRN: shorturl.at/ZcW4z.

The ACHA is happy to award two grants to graduate students or contingent faculty members to support research, travel, or writing every summer. This year, we are awarding grants to Dennis Wieboldt and Benjamin Groth.

Along with colleagues at the Institute for Advanced Jesuit Studies, I'm happy to be guest editing a special issue of Jesuit Educational Quarterly on "Legal Education and the Society of Jesus." If you are writing on the history or theory of Jesuit legal education, please consider submitting a MS!

Looking forward to joining @PeterJThuesen, @SusDeStradis, and Molly Worthen (UNC-Chapel Hill) to discuss the inter-religious dynamics of American constitutional thought at this year’s S-USIH conference:

Very humbled to have received the Supreme Court Historical Society's 2024 Henry J. Abraham Early Career Research Grant. I'll now be able to complete an article for the Journal of Supreme Court History entitled "'God's Litigator': William Bentley Ball and the Creation of the Religious Liberty Lawyer."

Great to see the recording of last year's de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture Benedict XVI conference now online. My paper on the resonances between Pope Benedict's vision of Catholic legal education and that of some 20th-century American Catholics begins at 55:30. youtube.com/watch?v=jQhDd-…

In honor of Constitution Day, returning to my article in the latest issue of Horizons on John Courtney Murray's (overlooked) Augustinian reading of the American Founding. Now available on SSRN at: shorturl.at/XrO4B.

One month left to register for the 10/19 meeting of the ASLH/ND Graduate Legal History Colloquium: shorturl.at/jkXXx. Our convening space is full, but hope you'll join the conversation with our Northwestern Law, UVA Law School, @NYULaw, Notre Dame Law School, and UChicago Law School colleagues on Zoom!