Professor Emeritus John Finnis made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire
When King Charles III issued the first New Year Honours of his reign last week, a longtime Notre Dame Law School faculty member was among those on the list.
Biolchini Family Professor Emeritus of Law John Finnis was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire for his services to legal scholarship.
Finnis — renowned throughout the world for his work in moral, political and legal theory and constitutional law — taught and researched at Notre Dame from 1995 to 2020. He previously taught at the University of Oxford in England, where he now resides in his retirement and continues to be a professor emeritus of law and legal philosophy at Oxford.
“I am thrilled that Professor John Finnis received this recognition. He is one of the greatest legal minds of all time, and it’s always a delight to celebrate the impact of his work,” said G. Marcus Cole, the Joseph A. Matson Dean and Professor of Law at Notre Dame Law School. “Our students and faculty — myself included — have been blessed to count John Finnis as a friend, colleague and mentor. We are cheering the news of his latest honor, which is richly deserved.”
Finnis’ towering career as a teacher and scholar has produced classic, influential works such as “Natural Law & Natural Rights,” published in 1980 by Oxford University Press.
During his 25 years at Notre Dame, Finnis published seminal works including “Aquinas: Moral, Political and Legal Theory” (Oxford University Press, 1998), a second edition of “Natural Law & Natural Rights” (Oxford University Press, 1980, 2011) with an 80-page postscript, five volumes of the “Collected Essays of John Finnis” (Oxford University Press, 2011), and in 2013 his 123-page “Reflections and Responses” in “Reason, Morality and Law: Essays in Honour of John Finnis,” edited by John Keown and Robert P. George (Oxford University Press, 2013). Throughout those 25 years he co-edited the American Journal of Jurisprudence, first with Professor Gerard V. Bradley and later with Professor Jeffrey Pojanowski. He remains a permanent distinguished senior research fellow at the University of Notre Dame’s de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture.
In fall 2021, Pojanowski organized a conference to celebrate Finnis’ work. The conference, “The Legacy of John Finnis: Contemporary Engagements and Developments,” was held at Notre Dame’s London Global Gateway.
“My 25 years in the Biolchini Family Chair were an incomparable opportunity that I profoundly appreciated from beginning to end, for the teaching, the research facilities, and the scholarly and collegial interaction with students and colleagues at Notre Dame Law School,” Finnis said this week. “It was an opportunity also, as it turned out, to inaugurate an interaction between the law faculties of Oxford and Notre Dame that is continuing and I hope will bring much good fruit for both universities for many years.”
Finnis earned his LL.B. in 1961 from Adelaide University in his home country, Australia, and his doctorate in 1965 from Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar at University College Oxford.
His other honors have included being elected in 1989 a fellow of the British Academy, in both the law and philosophy sections, and in 2019 a Companion of the Order of Australia. The citation for the latter, Australia’s highest civil award, was: “For eminent service to the law, and to education, to legal theory and philosophical enquiry, and as a leading jurist, academic and author.”
When Queen Elizabeth II appointed him honorary Queen’s Counsel in 2017, the Lord Chancellor’s office announced: “He is a leading legal philosopher and legal scholar at Oxford University and Notre Dame. Many of his former students have gone on to teach at prestigious universities around the world, or to sit in the higher courts in England and Wales and beyond. Over his long and distinguished academic career in the law faculties at Oxford and at Notre Dame, Professor Finnis has made a prolific and peerless contribution to legal scholarship. He is known for his work in the tradition of classical natural law thought, which has transformed the study of jurisprudence across the world. He is also a distinguished authority in other areas of law, particularly constitutional law and medical law, and his work in these areas has been cited by the UK Supreme Court and the Court of Appeal. Professor Finnis has dedicated himself for many years to the service of legal scholarship and legal education and at the very highest level.”
Originally published by law.nd.edu on Jan. 6.
atLatest Colleges & Schools
- A picture of drought: ND ecologist matching NASA images with field data to measure forest healthNate Swenson strides so quickly through the Wisconsin forest while carrying a large pole clipper that postdoctoral researcher Vanessa Rubio usually follows the 40 feet of rope dragging behind him. When they reach the designated plot, Swenson extends the clipper about 30 feet high and pulls the rope to snip off a leafy twig from the canopy of a tall, tagged tree. The twig floats down through the dappled sunlight and lands in his hand.…
- ‘Freakonomics’ co-author Steve Levitt to speak at Notre DameSteven D. Levitt, economist and co-author of bestseller “Freakonomics,” will be the featured speaker for the University of Notre Dame’s Thomas H. Quinn Lecture Series.
- Notre Dame business school to launch Global EMBAThe Notre Dame Global EMBA is designed to offer working professionals with deeper global leadership experience.
- Shakespeare at Notre Dame to present ‘Hamlet 50/50,’ a new gender-balanced adaptation of the playThis week, the Notre Dame Shakespeare Festival Professional Company will debut “Hamlet 50/50,” a world-premiere adaptation of the play focused on creating a more gender-balanced and equitable production model. “Hamlet 50/50” will be performed in the Patricia George Decio Theatre in the University’s DeBartolo Performing Arts Center from Aug. 17 to 27.
- Connor Kaufmann wins Fulbright to attend summer institute in ScotlandConnor Kaufmann was selected for the program based on academic excellence (3.7 minimum GPA), a focused application, extracurricular and community activities, ambassadorial skills and a plan to give back to his home country. “I strongly felt that it would give me the opportunity to foster my creativity in a unique, robust and international way,” he said. “This would, in turn, give me the opportunity to best help my community’s immigration issues in creative and innovative ways.”
- A Perilous Journey: Economics students witness the challenges of migration in MexicoA group of migrants at a shelter near Puebla, Mexico, sat in a circle of chairs and stared nervously across at five students from Eva Dziadula's Economics of Immigration class and a few other Notre Dame students studying abroad there. The migrants were nearly all young men from Honduras. How could they describe the harrowing decision to leave their families and homes or the tortuous trip of thousands of miles on top of dangerous freight trains to get to the border of the United States?…