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October 31, 2025 marks the 25th anniversary of Thomas More’s becoming “Patron of Statesmen.” In 1999, he had already been elected “Lawyer of the Millennium” by the Law Society of Great Britain, and long before that he had been adopted worldwide as the patron of lawyers. What was More’s vision of the law? Why did he consider it essential to a country’s peace and prosperity? Why is the rule of law so difficult to achieve?
Join us for the lecture addressing these questions from 5:30-7:00PM and feel free to stay for a reception until 8:00PM!
Dr. Gerard Wegemer has served since 2000 as the founding director of the Center for Thomas More Studies. He has graduate degrees in literature and political philosophy from Boston College, Georgetown, and Notre Dame and has taught for over thirty-five years at the University of Dallas.
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During England’s civil war, “The Wars of the Roses,” More’s father was a leading lawyer in London and a lecturer in law before becoming a high court judge. During times of civil unrest, young Thomas More practiced and taught law before becoming the most sought-after lawyer in London; he served for eight years as a judge in the sheriff of London’s court; he was invited several times to give guest lectures in advanced law and in the history and philosophy of law; he then served as judge in the King’s court before become Lord Chancellor of England, the highest judge of the land.
Earlier, when he had completed his law studies at twenty-three, he took up ancient Greek, mastered it in three years so he could read Plato, Aristotle, Herodotus, Thucydides, and the Greek Church Fathers about the history, practice, and philosophy of our long tradition of law and justice. As a young lawyer, More wrote his own history of England modeled after the classical histories of Greece and Rome, and he wrote his own version of Plato’s Republic: On Justice and of Cicero’s Republic.
More therefore combined an unusual blend of practice with historical and philosophic depth along with an intimate knowledge of the law that arose from working in a large commercial city and in a nation struggling with its own problems of war and peace, economic strains and political turmoil.
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Dr. Gerard Wegemer co-edited The Essential Works of Thomas More published in 2020 by Yale University Press, and he organizes a yearly international conference on Thomas More at the University of Dallas. Among his publications are Young Thomas More and the Arts of Liberty, Thomas More’s Trial by Jury, A Thomas More Source Book, Thomas More on Statesmanship, and Thomas More: A Portrait of Courage.
Dr. Wegemer has given many CLE presentations.