People
M. Cathleen Kaveny
John P. Murphy Foundation Professor of Law and Professor of Theology
(A.B., Princeton University, 1984; and four graduate degrees from Yale University including an M.A., 1986; M.Phil, 1990; J.D., 1990; and Ph.D., 1991)
Profile
Prior to joining the faculty at Notre Dame, Kaveny, a member of the Massachusetts Bar since 1993, clerked for the Honorable John T. Noonan Jr. of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and worked as an associate at the Boston law firm of Ropes & Gray in its health-law group. She has published many articles on issues lying at the intersection of law, morality, and religion, in journals such as The Hastings Center Report, Theological Studies, and the Wake Forrest Law Review.
She has served on the editorial boards of the Journal of Law and Religion, The Annual of the Society of Christian Ethics and the American Journal of Jurisprudence. Particular topics she has addressed include the function of religious discourse in the public square, the role of law as a moral teacher in a pluralistic society, and the impoverishment of the commodified notion of time dominating legal practice and the contemporary business world. Much of her scholarship has focused on questions in health care ethics, such as assisted suicide, cloning, and managed care. Her current projects include one book on complicity with evil, and another on the relationship between justice and mercy.
In addition to teaching contracts to first-year law students, Professor Kaveny also teaches interdisciplinary classes in both the law school and the theology department. She regularly offers an interdisciplinary course entitled "Ethics and Law at the End of Life." The class, which she has offered at both the graduate and undergraduate levels, explores the questions of assisted suicide and euthanasia from the perspectives of theology, philosophy, public policy, and law.
Professor Kaveny also participates in the national conversation about the relationship of Catholicism and intellectual life. She serves on the steering committee of the Catholic Common Ground Initiative founded by the late Cardinal Bernardin, and is also a member of the advisory board for the University's Erasmus Institute.
Contact
324 Law School
574-631-7844
M.Cathleen.Kaveny.1@nd.edu