J. Joel Alicea, professor at Catholic Law and Co-Director of its Project on Constitutional Originalism and the Catholic Intellectual Tradition, was hosted by Harvard Law School on Tuesday, April 9, to deliver the 2024 Herbert W. Vaughan Memorial Lecture. This endowed lecture series promotes and advances the core principles and doctrines of American constitutionalism. Previous Vaughan lecturers have featured U.S. Supreme Court justices, such as Justice Antonin Scalia and Justice Clarence Thomas; former U.S. Solicitor General Paul Clement; and Stanford Law professor Michael W. McConnell. Harvard Law professor Jack Goldsmith, who introduced Alicea, noted that the Catholic Law professor—a graduate of Harvard Law and a former student of Goldsmith—was the youngest Vaughan lecturer ever, “which is a testament to the extraordinary importance of his work to date.”

Alicea’s lecture, entitled “The Natural Law Moment in Constitutional Theory,” examined what he described as the recent “outpouring of legal scholarship on the relationship between natural law and American constitutional theory.” The recording of Alicea’s lecture is available here.