Professor Chad Squitieri presented his forthcoming law review article entitled “Administrative Virtues” on Friday, April 21, 2023, during The Catholic University of America Columbus School of Law’s monthly Faculty Research Colloquium. Squitieri’s expertise includes administrative and constitutional law, and he serves as a fellow for the Project on Constitutional Originalism and the Catholic Intellectual Tradition.

At this month’s colloquium, the faculty was joined by Professor Lawrence B. Solum, who offered comments on Squitieri’s article. Solum is an internationally recognized legal theorist who works in constitutional theory, procedure and the philosophy of law, and serves as the William L. Matheson and Robert M. Morgenthau Distinguished Professor of Law and the Douglas D. Drysdale Research Professor of Law at the University of Virginia School of Law.

Squitieri’s article proposes that administrative law can develop to incorporate insights from virtue ethics, similar to how administrative law has already developed to incorporate insights from the deontological and consequentialist perspectives. A shift to virtue ethics would call for a more central focus on the actors that exercise administrative power, rather than just the duties that might constrain those actors’ discretion (deontology) or the balancing of consequences that might flow from the actors’ proposed regulatory actions (consequentialism).

The Faculty Research Colloquium is a monthly meeting whereby law school faculty present on “work in progress” and receive comments and suggestions from their colleagues. It is directed by Professor Lucia Silecchia, Associate Dean of Faculty Research.