Patrick McKinley Brennan, JD

Professor of Law | John F. Scarpa Chair in Catholic Legal Studies Villanova University

Villanova PA

Patrick McKinley Brennan, JD, is an expert in Christian legal thought, constitutional law and religion and the law.

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Areas of Expertise

Catholic Church

Common-Good Constitutionalism

Catholic Legal Studies

Political Friendship

Constitutional Law

Pope Leo XIV

Pope Leo XIII

Vatican

Catholic Social Teaching

Purposes of Criminal Punishment

Administrative and Regulatory Law

Biography

Patrick McKinley Brennan came to Villanova in 2004 as the inaugural holder of the John F. Scarpa Chair in Catholic Legal Studies and later also served as associate dean for academic affairs. Previously, he was professor of law and vice dean at the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law, Arizona State University, where he taught for eight years.

Professor Brennan has published five books: Christian Legal Thought: Materials and Cases (Foundation Press, 2017) (with Brewbaker), By Nature Equal: The Anatomy of a Western Insight (Princeton University Press, 1999) (with Coons); Civilizing Authority: Society, State, and Church (Lexington, 2007); The Vocation of the Child (Eerdmans, 2008); Legal Affinities: Explorations in the Legal Form of Thought (Carolina Academic Press, 2014) (with Powell and Sammons).

Professor Brennan has also published more than eighty articles, essays, and book chapters, some of which have appeared in Michigan Law Review, University of Pennsylvania Law Review, Boston College Law Review, Notre Dame Law Review, Emory Law Journal, Law and Philosophy, Review of Metaphysics, Journal of Law and Religion, and American Journal of Jurisprudence.

Professor Brennan’s scholarship currently focuses on common-good constitutionalism, equality, political friendship, and forgiveness. He has regularly taught constitutional law, administrative law, federal courts, criminal law, and a wide range of courses in jurisprudence, law and religion, Christian legal thought, and political theory.

In 2014, Brennan was awarded the degree D. Litt. (honoris causa) by the Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology (Berkeley), where he serves as a fellow. Brennan has served as an elected member of the editorial board of the American Journal of Jurisprudence and as an elected member of the executive council of the American Catholic Philosophical Association.

Brennan majored in philosophy at Yale, earned an M.A. in philosophy at the University of Toronto, and then graduated Berkeley Law, where he was elected to the Order of the Coif. Following law school, Brennan clerked for the Honorable John T. Noonan Jr., on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in San Francisco, after which he was associated with major law firms in San Francisco and Washington, DC. He is a native of California.

Education

Yale College

University of Toronto

U.C. Berkeley - Berkeley Law (Boalt Hall)

Select Media Appearances

From Leo XIII to the Wagner Act

Commonweal Magazine online

2025-11-24

"While the purpose of divine law is to establish humanity in friendship with God, Aquinas tells us that “the principal intention of human law is to create friendship between man and man.” Lawmakers and other civil authorities can do justice by creating laws that bring people together—including in labor unions and employer associations—for the sake of friendship and experience of the common good. As Ahmari writes, it is “grace, not pedigree” that makes “one receptive to higher things,” including the truth that politics is, in Pope Leo XIV’s words, “a mission for the spread of truth and goodness.”

Do Papal Conclaves Need to Be So Secretive?

National Catholic Register online

2025-05-21

Patrick Brennan, professor of law at Villanova University’s Charles Widger School of Law, told the Register that cardinals aren’t accountable to human beings in a papal conclave, but each instead is supposed “to vote his conscience before God alone.”

“I think that to avoid any cardinals ever having to be called to account to any human, it has to be absolutely secret,” Brennan said by telephone.

Pope Leo XIV, Villanova Grad, Introduces Himself Adorned in Symbolism, Proverbial Religious Devotion

FOX online

2025-05-09

"I think Pope Leo XIV, by choosing that name, is attaching himself to a legacy that he can, and I believe intends to, open for a world that's changed a great deal and needs new light and understanding of the kind he probably associates and finds in the world of Pope Leo XIII," Brennan said.

Answers

: Leo XIII had followed Saint Augustine in saying that there can be no peace, except peace understood as a "tranquility of order," where order means that all things are ordered according to the will of Christ. What Leo XIII thought we needed to do is to find that and try to order our individual lives and our lives as a Church, so that the world can live in peace. Leo XIV also picks up on themes like that a lot. His first words on the on the loggia on May 8, 2025, were, "Peace be with you all!" And he keeps coming back to that, time after time, understanding that peace isn't just the absence of conflict. Peace is things being rightly ordered, and "rightly ordered" means a world in which people love each other, including through law and politics.
Pope Leo XIII was known as the "Pope of the East." He was actually listening to many of the patriarchs at the time who were opposed to a lot of the colonization that was happening—and Latinization. So, in my mind, it's notable that one of Pope Leo XIV's first addresses was to the Eastern Catholic Churches and that his first papal visit was to celebrate the 1700th anniversary of Nicaea [an ecumenical council that was among the first efforts to attain theological consensus among Christians]. To me, it signals his recognition of the concentric circles of unity that are needed. First of all, we Catholics have to figure out our own unity. But then what does it mean to be in right relationship with Churches that have equal dignity in terms of their apostolic heritage and have drifted away for historical reasons? I think Pope Leo XIV is trying to listen to the cry of our generation, and younger generations, and help us all discern what is the right response.
There are a few big themes, the first being migration. Pope Leo XIII saw emigration, which was actually forbidden by the Church, as an opportunity to build a new idea of the Church and extend its influence on the international scale. He took a really important stand to defend migrants, especially Italian migrants, at the time of the Great Italian Immigration, because he saw them as missionaries who could bring their faith to the United States. Pope Leo XIV carries that same instinct—he sees immigrants not as a plight, but rather as an opportunity to make contact with new worlds.From the European perspective, the commercial expansion of the U.S. and its westward growth was viewed with some fear during Leo XIII's papacy. Leo XIII again viewed this expansion as an opportunity, and he oversaw the establishment of new dioceses from Kansas westward in the U.S. He praised the development and mission of the American Church while also recognizing the hesitations many had about the new world. Leo XIV also has somewhat of a mixed relationship with the United States. He grew up in the U.S. but primarily lived in Peru, so he observed the U.S. from the outside and has a critical lens of the country. He recognizes both the insider and outsider perspective of the U.S.
: In his language to diplomats and about matters of international concern, Pope Leo is notably good at articulating and reaffirming the principles that Catholics insist must guide decision-making, without getting down into the conclusions at a contestable level. The way he speaks and his presence could make it easier to discuss such sensitive topics. There were times when Pope Francis would talk off the cuff and give exaggerated responses, which would sometimes cause [the Vatican] to have to backtrack. With Leo, it's always careful. I think he sees his job to be a model of deliberation, care and unequivocal commitment to first principles that everybody should live by.
Pope Francis was very prophetic, and he had a spiritual charism—there was a freedom there. He saw where the Church needed to go. He saw that it was too sluggish, too staid and too reserved, and his Laudato si' encyclical was really groundbreaking in what it could call us to... A fear with Pope Leo is that he's going to be too moderate and too much of a statesman. He wants to keep everyone happy and together, but I don't think "The universal Church is universal" approach works anymore. Because it's such a very large, complex world, it's very hard to hold together something that is unifying. Unity can only work locally.
Pope Leo is cautious, but he is still bold. He has still spoken out on Russia and Ukraine, the situation in the Middle East and all of that. And his caution is not out of fear; it's a caution out of truly wanting to listen before speaking. If anything, I think he's modeling a hunger for a "spirituality of we," and he's also insisting that we need silence for a little bit. It's a lot of noise, but the silence is going to help us understand what's that next step we take together.

Select Academic Articles

A Catholic Way to Cook a Hamburger? The Catholic Case Against McLaw

Villanova Law Review

2016

"Religious Freedom," The Individual Mandate, and Gifts: On Why the Church is Not a Bomb Shelter

Villanova Law Review

2013

The Liberty of the Church: Source, Scope, and Scandal

Journal of Contemporary Legal Issues