Adam J. MacLeod is a Professor of Law and Co-Associate Dean for Faculty Research at The Catholic University of America, and a Fellow at the Center for Law and the Human Person. He was previously Professor of Law and Katherine A. Ryan Chair at St. Mary’s University and, before that, Professor of Law at Faulkner University, where students twice named him Professor of the Year. He has been a visiting fellow in the James Madison Program at Princeton University and research fellow at George Mason University. He serves as Senior Fellow of the Center for Religion, Culture and Democracy.

Professor MacLeod writes about jurisprudence and private rights, especially property and intellectual property rights and the rights of the family. He is the author of Property and Practical Reason (Cambridge University Press 2015) and co-editor of Christie and Martin’s Jurisprudence: Text and Readings on the Philosophy of Law (4th edition, West Academic 2020). His scholarly articles have appeared in the Modern Law Review, Notre Dame Law Review, and Alabama Law Review, among dozens of other journals. He has written more than one hundred essays, op-eds, and book reviews, which have appeared in the Washington Post, Washington Times, National Review Online, Journal of Law & Religion, Touchstone Magazine, and Law & Liberty, among other places. He is a featured scholar in the Arte TV documentary, Le Monde et sa Propriété, in Europe. His scholarship has been cited by state supreme courts and the high court of Ontario. 

After graduating summa cum laude from Gordon College and magna cum laude from Notre Dame Law School, Professor MacLeod served as law clerk to Chief Justice Christopher Armstrong and Justice Benjamin Kaplan of the Massachusetts Appeals Court and to Chief Judge Lewis Babcock of the United States District Court for the District of Colorado. He practiced law in Boston. His public service includes an appointment as a special Deputy Attorney General of Alabama and lecturer in the Alabama Judicial College. An Operational Auxiliarist in the U.S. Coast Guard Auxiliary, he has advised auxiliary and active duty Coast Guard commands and has served in operational, liaison, and training roles. At home, Professor MacLeod marvels at and tries to keep up with the joys of his life, his wife and daughters.

 

Representative Scholarship

BOOKS

Jurisprudence: Text and Readings on the Philosophy of Law (4^th ed., West Academic Publishing 2020) (with George C. Christie and Patrick H. Martin) 

The Age of Selfies: Reasoning About Right(s) When the Stakes Are Personal (Rowman & Littlefield 2020)

Foundations of Law (Carolina Academic Press 2017) (with Robert L. McFarland) 

Property and Practical Reason (Cambridge University Press 2015)

REPRESENTATIVE ARTICLES AND BOOK CHAPTERS

Foundations of the Right of Charitable Uses, 94 Mississippi Law Journal 251 (2025) (M.L.J. Peer Review Forum) (with Mark David Hall) 

The First Amendment, Discrimination, and Public Accommodations at Common Law, 112 Kentucky Law Journal 209 (2024)

Cyber Trespass and Property Concepts, 10 IP Theory 4 (2021)

What Makes Property Liberal?, 84 Modern Law Review 1427 (2021) 

Public Rights After Oil States Energy, 95 Notre Dame Law Review 1281 (2020)

The Boundaries of Dominion, in Christianity and Private Law (Robert Cochran and Michael Moreland, eds., Routledge 2020)

Patent Infringement as Trespass, 69 Alabama Law Review 723 (2018)

Of Brutal Murder and Transcendental Sovereignty: The Meaning of Vested Private Rights, 41 Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy 253 (2018)

Tempering Civil Rights Conflicts: Common Law for the Moral Marketplace, 2016 Michigan State Law Review 643

Bridging the Gaps in Property Theory, 77 Modern Law Review 1009 (2014)

Universities as Constitutional Lawmakers, 17 University of Pennsylvania Journal of Constitutional Law Online 1 (2014) 

Identifying Values in Land Use Regulation, 101 Kentucky Law Journal 55 (2012)

The Substantial Burden Test in RLUIPA, in Zoning and Planning Law Handbook (Patricia E. Salkin, ed., West Publishing 2012)

A Non-Fatal Collision: Where Religious Land Uses and Community Interests Meet, 42 Urban Lawyer 41 (2010)

A Gift Worth Dying For?: Debating the Volitional Nature of Suicide in Personal Property Law, 45 Idaho Law Review 93 (2008)