Vincent D. Rougeau became Dean of Boston College Law School on July 1, 2011. He previously served as a professor of law at Notre Dame, and served as their Associate Dean for Academic Affairs from 1999-2002. He received his A.B. magna cum laude from Brown University in 1985, and his J.D. from Harvard Law School in 1988, where he served as articles editor of the Harvard Human Rights Journal.
An expert in Catholic social thought, Dean Rougeau’s most recent book, Christians in the American Empire: Faith and Citizenship in the New World Order, was released in 2008 by Oxford University Press. Using Catholic social teaching and its secular philosophical antecedents as his point of departure, Dean Rougeau explores how key assumptions underlying Catholic thinking diverge from many of the ideas animating American law and public policy in areas like poverty relief, immigration, and redress for racial discrimination. He also develops an understanding of Christianity as a natural partner for international human rights and a foundation for a legal cosmopolitanism that transcends nation-state boundaries.
His current research and writing consider the relationship between religious identity and notions of democratic citizenship and membership in an increasingly mobile global order, one that is marked in certain regions by high levels of economic inequality and political instability. He is currently the leader of a research group on global migration and cosmopolitanism as part of the Contending Modernities project sponsored by the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at Notre Dame. Over the next two to three years, the group will sponsor an international conference and publish a book.
Dean Rougeau’s teaching interests are in contract and real estate law, as well as in law and religion. He has taught first year contracts, real estate transactions, and seminars in Catholic social teaching and immigration and multiculturalism. He is a member of the bar in Maryland and the District of Columbia. Before entering the academy, he practiced law at the Washington, DC office of Morrison & Foerster from 1988-1991.
Prior to his arrival at Boston College, Dean Rougeau was a Senior Fellow at the Contextual Theology Center (“CTC”) in London and co-founded an effort called “Just Communities: Christian Witness in a Pluralist Society.” Just Communities was a partnership among Notre Dame, the CTC, and Magdalen College, Oxford University that explored the role of religious communities in community organizing and the formation of democratic citizens in the multi-cultural neighborhoods of East London. He also served as the director of the Notre Dame Law School’s Center for Law and Government and supervised the Journal of Law, Ethics, and Public Policy while a member of the faculty.
Dean Rougeau blogs regularly for Contending Modernities.
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