First Things: Barack Obama and Notre Dame: Juris Doctor Honoris Causa?

By Francis J. Beckwith
Tuesday, March 31, 2009

If you have not heard yet, President Barack Obama has accepted an invitation from the University of Notre Dame—not only to address its graduates at its May 17 commencement exercises but also to have bestowed upon him at this event an honorary doctorate of laws.

The University of Notre Dame is a Catholic university, which means that it affirms the truth of Catholic moral theology and all that it entails about liberty, community, and the dignity of the human person. According to Catholic moral theology, a regime whose laws sequester a group of human beings from its protections for reasons that are capricious and gravely immoral is a regime whose laws on this matter are not really laws at all. In fact, we need not even consult a Catholic theologian, philosopher, or legal scholar to receive clarity on this question. We can cite the words of a Baptist minister, who made generous use of St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas in what has become one of the most important epistles in American political discourse. On April 16, 1963, in his “A Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. penned these words:

I would agree with St. Augustine that “an unjust law is no law at all.” Now, what is the difference between the two? How does one determine whether a law is just or unjust? A just law is a man made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas: An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law. Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust. the rest