What Does Virtue Have to do with the Law?

Richard W. Garnett is the Paul J. Schierl Professor of Law and Concurrent Professor of Political Science at the University of Notre Dame. He teaches and writes about the freedoms of speech, association, and religion and about constitutional law more generally. He is a leading authority on questions and debates regarding church-state relations and the role of religious believers and beliefs in society. He has published widely on these matters and is the author of dozens of lawreview articles and book chapters and the co-author of three books. Professor Garnett is regularly invited to share analysis and commentary in national print and broadcast media, and he contributes to several law-related blogs, including Mirror of Justice and PrawfsBlawg.

He is the founding director of Notre Dame Law School’s Program on Church, State, and Society, an interdisciplinary project that focuses on the role of religious institutions, communities, and authorities in the social order. He served on the Notre Dame Task Force on Catholic Education, is a Fellow of the University’s Institute for Educational Initiatives, and consults regularly with the Alliance for Catholic Education. He is a member of the American Law Institute and the American Academy of Sciences and Letters.

Professor Garnett clerked for the late Chief Justice of the United States, William H. Rehnquist, during the Court’s 1996 term and also for the late Chief Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, Richard S. Arnold. He earned his J.D. from Yale Law School in 1995 and his B.A., summa cum laude, from Duke University in 1990. He joined the faculty in 1999 after practicing law in Washington, D.C., with Miller, Cassidy, Larroca & Lewin.

He and his wife, Professor Nicole Stelle Garnett, live in South Bend, Indiana and have four children.

Darrell A. H. Miller is a scholar of civil rights, constitutional law, civil procedure, state and local government law, and legal history at the University of Chicago.

His scholarship on the Second and Thirteenth Amendments has been published in leading law reviews such as the Yale Law Journal, the University of Chicago Law Review, and the Columbia Law Review, and has been cited by several courts, including the Supreme Court of the United States.

With Joseph Blocher, he is author of The Positive Second Amendment: Rights, Regulation, and the Future of Heller (Cambridge University Press, 2018).  With others, he has also published a textbook: The Second Amendment: Gun Rights and Regulation (Foundation Press, 2025).  In addition to his academic writing, Miller has written opinion pieces for the Washington Post, the New York Times, and Slate.

Prior to joining the faculty at the University of Chicago in 2024, Miller taught law at Duke University, where he co-founded the Duke Center for Firearms Law, the first academic center of its kind in the nation.

Miller is a former clerk to the Honorable R. Guy Cole, Jr. of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit and practiced complex and appellate litigation before beginning his academic career.

A cum laude graduate of Harvard Law School, Miller also holds degrees from Oxford University, where he studied as a Marshall Scholar, and from Anderson University. He is an elected member of the American Law Institute and currently serves on its Council.

Marc O. DeGirolami is the inaugural St. John Henry Newman Professor of Law and Co-Director of the Center for Law and the Human Person at The Catholic University of America. His publications include The Constitution of Practice: On Law and Tradition (Cambridge University Press) and The Tragedy of Religious Freedom (Harvard University Press), as well as articles in the Yale Law Journal Forum, Notre Dame Law Review, Washington University Law Review, Constitutional Commentary, Legal Theory, and the Boston College Law Review, among others. He has written in the popular press for The New York Times, The New Republic, First Things, Commonweal, and Law and Liberty.

Before joining the Columbus School of Law in 2024, he was the Cary Fields Professor of Law and the Co-Director of the Mattone Center for Law and Religion at St. John’s Law School. He has also been a Visiting Professor and Visiting Fellow at Princeton University’s Department of Politics, as well as a Visiting Professor at Notre Dame Law School and Catholic University, Columbus School of Law.

He has taught Constitutional Law, Constitutional Theory, Criminal Law, Freedom of Speech & Freedom of Inquiry, Jurisprudence, Law and Religion, Professional Responsibility, and Torts.