Background

I received my Ph.D. at Emory University in 1995. After spending a year here at UofSC as a visitor, and then a year teaching philosophy in Ejisu, Ghana, I returned permanently to UofSC in 1997. I have twice had year-long fellowships at the James Madison Program at Princeton University; I’ve also had visiting fellowships at the Eudaimonia Institute at Wake Forest University, and, most recently, the DeNicola Center for Ethics and Culture at the University of Notre Dame.

Research Interests

I work broadly in ethics, in an area of natural law philosophy popularly called the "new" natural law theory.  My work spans the foundations of ethics, action theory, and various areas of practical ethics including medical ethics, the ethics of lying and truth-telling, and beginning and ending of life ethics. My book Killing and Christian Ethics is forthcoming in 2026 from Cambridge University Press.

Recent Publications

Books

•  The Way of Medicine: Ethics and the Healing Profession co-authored with Farr Curlin of Duke University (University of Notre Dame Press, 2021).
• Natural Law Ethics in Theory and Practice: A Joseph Boyle Reader co-edited with John Liptay of St. Thomas More College, University of Saskatchewan (Catholic University of America Press, 2020).
• Lying and Christian Ethics (Cambridge University Press, 2014).

Articles - Some recent and forthcoming work includes:

• “The Bioethics of Disability and Some Neglected Goods,” in Emerging Issues in Catholic Bioethics Jason Eberl ed. (Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Springer, forthcoming).
• “The Good of Work in the New Natural Law Theory,” in The Concept of Work in the History of European Philosophy: By the Sweat of Your Brow Eugene Callahan, ed. (Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave McMillan, forthcoming).
• “Law and Lawfulness: Genealogy, Jurisprudence, and the Thought of Bernard Williams,” in Bernard Williams on Law and Jurisprudence: From Agency and Responsibility to Methodology, Veronica Rodriguez-Blanco, Daniel Peixoto Murata and Julieta A Rábanos eds. (London: Hart Publishing, forthcoming).
• “The Strict Account of Intention and Vital Conflict Cases,” Journal of Natural Law 1 (2025): forthcoming (inaugural issue).
• “Persons in Four Orders,” in Proceedings and Addresses of the American Catholic Philosophical Association Conference, 2023, 55-67.
• “The Catholic Studies in Bioethics Subseries,” in 50 Years of Philosophy and Medicine, Lisa Rasmussen and Søren Holm, eds. (Dordrecht, The Netherlands, Springer, 2025), 95-108.
• “Artistic Liberty,” American Journal of Jurisprudence 2025: 1-11.

Other work available at Academia.edu.

Regularly Taught Courses 

I teach a variety of undergraduate classes as needed, including our Junior and Senior Seminars for Majors. Recent topics for those seminars have been the ethics of lying and truth-telling, and the nature of law.  Recent graduate seminars have focused on the work of Alasdair MacIntyre and Bernard Williams (2024) and natural law jurisprudence (2022)..

Projects

I have published a number of more popular essays, including over 100 for the online journal Public Discourse which are available here.

Other

This year, I am directing the new South Carolina Center for American Civic Leadership and Public Discourse.