Awards

Titled Professor - 2019

Townsend Professorship

About John L. Hill

John L. Hill earned both his J.D. and Ph.D. in philosophy from Georgetown University, and he joined the IU Robert H. McKinney School of Law in 2003. In 2019, he was awarded the prestigious Townsend Professorship. He is a classical liberal and is interested in the natural law tradition developed by Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas He believes that any robust commitment to human rights, freedom and human dignity requires a commitment to some version of the natural law tradition, and that the natural law leads, in turn, back to belief in God.

He has published six books. The most recent, The Prophet of Modern Constitutional Liberalism: John Stuart Mill and the Supreme Court (Cambridge University Press, 2020), argues that the English political philosopher, J.S. Mill (1806-73), has been the single most important influence on the development of our constitutional rights tradition in the twentieth century. After the Natural Law: How the Classical Worldview Supports Our Modern Moral and Political Values (Ignatius Press, 2016, and translated into German as Nach dem Naturrecht in 2018) traces the development of western philosophy from classical thought to modernity and argues that our most important moral and political principles -- freedom, responsibility, equality and human dignity – are incoherent without a foundation in natural law. His book, The Political Centrist (Vanderbilt, 2009), argues that liberalism and conservatism are meaningless labels and defends a moderated approach to many of our most pressing social and political issues.

Professor Hill has also published several articles which have appeared in such venues as the New York University Law Review, the Cornell Law Review, the Iowa Law Review and the Georgetown Law Journal. Professor Hill has also taught classes in the Philosophy Department, including "Philosophical Issues in Criminal Law" and "The Philosophical Foundations of Modern Liberalism and Conservatism."