Editor
Brian Besong
Associate Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Wolf-Kuhn Ethics Institute, Saint Francis University
Brian Besong is the journal’s editor. His work lies where ethics and moral epistemology meet, with particular attention to moral knowledge, intuition, and disagreement. He is the author of a 2018 introduction to natural law moral theory from Cascade and coeditor of Faith and Reason: Philosophers Explain Their Turn to Catholicism (Ignatius, 2019), and he took his doctorate at Purdue University.
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Associate Editors
James M. Jacobs
Professor of Philosophy, Notre Dame Seminary, New Orleans
James M. Jacobs directs the philosophy program and serves as associate academic dean at Notre Dame Seminary, where he has taught since 2003. A Thomist whose central concern is natural law ethics, he treats Thomistic realism as a living alternative to the nominalism and relativism of much modern thought. He is the author of Seat of Wisdom: An Introduction to Philosophy in the Catholic Tradition (Catholic University of America Press, 2022), and his articles have appeared in the American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly, Nova et Vetera, and elsewhere.
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Matthew K. Minerd
Book Reviews Editor
Professor of Philosophy and Moral Theology, Byzantine Catholic Seminary of Saints Cyril and Methodius, Pittsburgh
Matthew K. Minerd works in the Thomistic tradition as a philosopher, moral theologian, and translator, and is managing editor of the Encyclopedia of Catholic Theology. He has recovered a generation of French and Latin scholarship for English readers, including major works of Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, and writes on philosophy, moral theology, and the natural law. He took his doctorate at the Catholic University of America.
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Editorial Board
J. Budziszewski
Professor of Government and Philosophy, University of Texas at Austin
J. Budziszewski is a leading contemporary expositor and defender of classical natural law, best known for the thesis that the foundation of the moral law is what we cannot not know. His books include Written on the Heart, What We Can’t Not Know, The Line Through the Heart, and a Commentary on Thomas Aquinas’s Treatise on Law, and he has done much to carry natural law to a wide scholarly and public readership.
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Edward Feser
Professor of Philosophy, Pasadena City College
Edward Feser is a prominent Thomist and Aristotelian who has revived classical metaphysics as the ground of natural law ethics. His books include Aquinas: A Beginner’s Guide, Scholastic Metaphysics, and, with Joseph Bessette, By Man Shall His Blood Be Shed, a natural law treatment of capital punishment.
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John Finnis
Biolchini Family Emeritus Professor of Law, University of Notre Dame; Professor of Law and Legal Philosophy Emeritus, University of Oxford
John Finnis is among the most influential natural law theorists of the past half-century. His Natural Law and Natural Rights (1980) returned natural law to the center of analytic jurisprudence, and with Germain Grisez and Joseph Boyle he developed what is known as the new natural law theory. His further works include Fundamentals of Ethics and Aquinas: Moral, Political, and Legal Theory.
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Kevin Flannery, S.J.
Ralph McInerny Distinguished Research Fellow, University of Notre Dame; Professor Emeritus, Pontifical Gregorian University
Kevin L. Flannery, S.J., is a specialist in ancient philosophy and Thomistic action theory whose work clarifies the logical structure of natural law morality. His books include Acts Amid Precepts and Cooperation with Evil: Thomistic Tools of Analysis.
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Russell Hittinger
Research Professor and Executive Director, Institute for Human Ecology, The Catholic University of America
Russell Hittinger is a leading interpreter of natural law in the Thomistic and Leonine traditions and of its place in Catholic social thought. His work includes The First Grace: Rediscovering the Natural Law in a Post-Christian World, A Critique of the New Natural Law Theory, and, most recently, On the Dignity of Society (Catholic University of America Press, 2024).
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Matthew Levering
James N. Jr. and Mary D. Perry Chair of Theology, Mundelein Seminary
Matthew Levering is among the most prolific theologians of his generation, bringing Scripture and the Thomistic tradition to bear on the moral life. His Biblical Natural Law: A Theocentric and Teleological Approach is a standard treatment of the theological grounding of natural law.
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Jean Porter
John A. O’Brien Professor Emeritus of Theology, University of Notre Dame
Jean Porter is a major moral theologian known for a historically grounded recovery of natural law in critical dialogue with contemporary accounts. Her books include Nature as Reason: A Thomistic Theory of the Natural Law, Ministers of the Law, and Justice as a Virtue.
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