The Role of Religion in a Catholic Law School: A Century of Experience at Loyola University Chicago

Many criteria have been suggested for identifying a Catholic law school and determining whether a law school claiming that identity is indeed truly Catholic. Many articles have been written which critique Catholic legal education in general and which judge whether Catholic law schools as a whole, or individual Catholic law schools, meet the offered criteria for such identification. Most of those articles deal with only certain aspects of legal education at Catholic law schools. The purpose of this article is to examine the record of one Catholic law school, the School of Law of Loyola University Chicago, which a few years ago celebrated its centennial. This is a detailed study of how the Catholic identity of Loyola Chicago’s law school has manifested itself over the past century, during several distinct eras. The article concludes that the criteria chosen to identify a truly Catholic law school will determine the result of whether any particular law school is indeed Catholic, and that different scholars and commentators will choose different criteria, therefore arriving at different conclusions. The article also concludes that, regardless of the criteria chosen, it is misleading to contend that the Catholic identity of Loyola Chicago’s law school is non-existent or a mere veneer.