Dr. J. Budziszewski Explains: Law Necessarily Founded on Morality

The Society for Law and Culture sponsored a lecture by Dr. J. Budziszewski on Thursday, November 2, 2017, titled, “Natural Law: Why and So What?” Budziszewski spoke to an attentive audience of lawyers, students, professors, clergy, and others gathered at WMU-Cooley Law School in Grand Rapids, Michigan. In a forceful defense of the natural law theory of St. Thomas Aquinas, Budziszewski argued that moral norms are real and knowable and that law is necessarily founded on morality.

Law is Necessarily Founded on Morality

J. Budziszewski discusses the moral foundations of law on the campus of Cooley Law in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Budziszewski is a professor of government and philosophy at the University of Texas. A popular speaker and writer, Budziszewski is the author of many books including Natural Law for Lawyers, On the Meaning of Sex, and Revenge of Conscience: Politics and the Fall of Man, as well as scholarly commentaries on Aquinas’s Treatise on Law and Virtue Ethics.

Law as Vocation and Humane Profession

Formed under the auspices of the Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal, the Society for Law and Culture is an organization of lawyers, judges, academics, and members of the wider community interested in the intellectual, moral, and cultural foundations of law. Through engagement with philosophy, literature, history, theology, and the arts, the Society for Law and Culture aims to strengthen the ties between law and culture and promote a renewed sense of the law as a vocation and humane profession.

The event was spearheaded by Maxwell Goss, a lawyer based in Troy, Michigan who founded and runs the Society for Law and Culture. Goss remarked: “Politics is important, but the culture from which politics arises is even more important. In our current climate, it is more critical than ever that we understand this. Professor Budziszewski hit it out of the park with his timely defense of a timeless theme.”

The event was co-sponsored by the Christian Legal Society, and was made possible by the generous support of the Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal, the Student Bar Association of WMU-Cooley Law School, and several private donors.