The Judgement of Solomon by Nicolas Poussin, c. 1649.
People often ask me, “What’s the best pre-law program I can take?” Invariably, my response is, “The best Catholic liberal education you can get!”
Catholic liberal education is indispensable to human life because it defines, articulates, and justifies ideas central to human life. For that same reason, Catholic liberal education is indispensable to law because law is concerned with the regulation of human life.
The modern notion asserts that law should develop apart from religious influence. Much has been written to show this is a false dichotomy – that religious influence is not solely and exclusively religious and that its separation from the law allows for irreligious influence instead.
While Catholic liberal education most certainly promotes Catholic ideas, it also promotes ideas that are not exclusively Catholic but are fundamental human ideas – the ideas on which civilization is based. Those concerned with fundamental human ideas are necessarily concerned with the development of the law because the law will necessarily affirm or reject those ideas. Given the growing evidence of the decline of Western Civilization, there is a greater concern about these ideas than ever before. Thus, there are several reasons why a Catholic liberal education is indispensable to the law.
1. It Identifies The Great Ideas Of Western Civilization.
For much of the last 2,000 years, the Catholic Church has helped shape Western Civilization by identifying, articulating, and justifying the fundamental ideas of life and human conduct. Those ideas include:
- Human Dignity
- Common Good
- Personal Virtue
- Civic Virtue
- State Action
- Private Action
- Liberty
- Justice
- Crime
- Governance
- Welfare
- Accountability
Throughout this same time, the law has defined, implemented, promoted, and enforced these same ideas. It has done so through the common law, and it continues to do so through statutory law and Constitutional law. Without Catholic liberal education to inform these ideas, Western Civilization is put at peril – and, correlatively, so are Christians.
2. It Promotes A Clear Vision Of The Human Person.
Fundamental to civilization is its understanding of the human person. Catholic liberal education divines natural law which, in turn, divines the notion of the human person in all of its dimensions – personhood, gender, marriage, reproduction, family relations, euthanasia, and eugenics. Without a foundation in natural law, all of the dimensions of personhood are subject to positive law however society deems it to be, and even contrary to natural law. See O. Carter Snead, “What It Means To Be Human: The Case For The Body In Public Bioethics” (2020).
3. It Promotes Fundamental Liberties.
Catholic liberal education identifies and promotes fundamental liberties and such natural rights as speech, assembly, conscience, press, religion, due process, personal privacy, parental rights, education, and ownership of property. The law identifies and aims to protect these rights. Without Catholic liberal education to identify and promote these rights, the law is rudderless, and all such rights are put at risk.
4. It Promotes Political Order.
The order of the State depends on such things as enforcement of the law, public safety, common defense, respect for the law, voting and the election process, and the election process. Catholic liberal education identifies and promotes this order; the institution of law identifies, protects, and enforces this order. The former is therefore necessary for the latter.
5. It Promotes Justice.
Since antiquity, Catholic liberal education has extolled justice as the rendering of one’s due. The process of that rendering is the judicial process. In the civil realm, this process is conducted through the adversary system. In the criminal realm, this process is conducted through state prosecution. Catholic liberal education and the law share an inseparable role – the former extols justice; the latter administers it.
6. It Promotes Personal Virtue.
Catholic liberal education aims to instill the four cardinal virtues (prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance) and the seven common virtues (honesty, courage, compassion, generosity, fidelity, integrity, and fairness). The law depends on these virtues for the survival of civilization because it cannot fully instill them itself; they are beyond its reach.
7. It Promotes Tolerance.
Tolerance means to bear or endure something disagreeable. What is disagreeable may or may not be the subject of the law. Murder, fraud, and bad manners are all disagreeable, but the law distinguishes what should be outlawed and what should be tolerated by balancing the good and evil involved. We tolerate adverse ideas; we outlaw public corruption. Catholic liberal education fosters love of neighbor and therefore tolerates such things as opposing ideas. The law demands impartiality – “justice is blind,” as the motto goes. Catholic liberal education offers a check on the law’s temptation to regulate more than it should and invade its assumed neutrality.
8. It Promotes Critical Thinking.
Catholic liberal education engenders critical thinking; the institution of law depends on it. Critical thinking is cultivated through definitions, principles, distinctions, and applications. The development of law depends on a similar process – forming the issue, identifying the rule, applying the rule, and drawing a conclusion therefrom. It proceeds by way of objection and response, thesis and antithesis, consideration and reconsideration. To the extent Catholic liberal education engenders this process, participants in the law benefit from it.
9. It Promotes A Check On Government.
An inherent tension exists between government control and individual liberty. Government always aims to control individual liberty, and when it does so excessively, it becomes tyrannical. Individual liberty, when it seeks absolute license beyond virtue, becomes perversion. Catholic liberal education helps curb both – it informs when government is tyrannical, and it informs what human conduct is perverse. The institution of law needs assistance in curbing both.
10. It Promotes A Joyful, Purposeful Life.
The Judeo/Christian view proposes a joyful, purposeful life – to know, love, and serve God (the Shema) and to love one’s neighbor as oneself (Leviticus). It identifies, promotes, and enables the four levels of personal fulfillment – immediate gratification (physical pleasure), comparative/personal achievement (the ego), contributive action (service to others), and satisfaction in the ultimate good (truth, beauty, goodness, love, and being). See Fr. Robert Spitzer, “The Four Levels of Happiness: Your Path to Personal Flourishing” (2015). While Catholic liberal education aims to identify, promote, and enable these levels, the institution of the law creates the opportunity for citizens to attain all four levels. Again, without Catholic liberal education, the law puts a joyful, purposeful life at peril.
I might also add, as a long-time practitioner, that the practice of law itself puts a joyful, purposeful life at peril; a Catholic liberal education helps one cope. But that is a different subject altogether.
David A. Shaneyfelt is an attorney with The Alvarez Firm in Calabasas, California, where he is among the five percent of attorneys in Southern California recognized by Reuters as a Super Lawyer. He is a graduate of Thomas Aquinas College and Willamette College of Law. This article is adapted from his presentation at the 2024 Symposium on Transforming Culture at Benedictine College.