M. Cathleen Kaveny

The John P. Murphy Foundation Professor of Law

M. Cathleen Kaveny specializes in the relationship between law and morality; she is highly regarded for her scholarship on questions of healthcare ethics, including assisted suicide, cloning, and managed care. She holds a joint appointment with the Department of Theology and regularly teaches both undergraduate and graduate students. Current research includes book projects on the subjects of complicity with evil, and justice and mercy.

A regular contributor to ongoing discussions about the relationship between Catholicism and intellectual life, Kaveny is widely published in the academic and popular press. She has a regular column in Commonweal and also writes for such journals as the New York Times and the Washington Post. In 2009, she was honored by the Associated Church Press for her work in Commonweal.

She serves on the steering committee of the Catholic Common Ground Initiative, founded by the late Cardinal Bernardin to help overcome polarization within the Catholic Church, and is also a member of the advisory board for the Erasmus Institute, which was established in 1997 to reinvigorate the role of Catholic intellectual traditions in contemporary scholarship.

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The Murphy Foundation, established by the late John Murphy (’12), created this professorship specifically for scholars whose teaching and research emphasize morality and ethics. For John’s service as president of the Notre Dame Alumni Association and a University Trustee, he was presented with an honorary doctor of laws degree.