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For the political writer, please see Robert A George.

Robert P. George is McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence at Princeton University, where he teaches courses on constitutional interpretation, civil liberties and philosophy of law. He also serves as the director of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions. He was educated at Swarthmore College (BA), Harvard Law School (JD), Harvard Divinity School (MTS), and New College, Oxford (DPhil). At Oxford he studied under John Finnis and Joseph Raz. Formerly, he served on the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights and as a fellow at the U.S. Supreme Court. He currently serves on the U.S. President's Council on Bioethics. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He serves on the editorial boards of Touchstone and First Things magazines, as well as several journals.

George is a prominent proponent of "New Natural Law Theory," a distinctive approach to moral, political, and legal philosophy that views moral truths as accessible to rational inquiry, and postulates as the criterion of sound ethical judgment the integral directiveness of various basic and irreducible aspects of human fulfillment, such as knowledge, friendship, critical aesthetic appreciation, and personal authenticity and integrity. Others in this school include Germain Grisez, John Finnis, and Joseph Boyle, Patrick Lee, and Gerard V. Bradley. George is a leading voice for social conservatism within the secular academy, and, in addition to scholarly work, is involved in pro-life and pro-family advocacy.

George is unusual among contemporary intellectuals in being held in esteem by liberals and conservatives alike. Although unabashedly conservative on moral and cultural questions, such as abortion, euthanasia, and sexual ethics, he has received accolades for his philosophical work from liberal academics with whom he disagrees. He is certainly unique in having been invited to give both the Norton Lectures at the deeply conservative Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and the John Dewey Lecture in Philosophy of Law at Harvard.

George was involved in a highly publicized dispute with Martha Nussbaum of the University of Chicago relating to the case Romer v. Evans in which both scholars testified as experts in moral and political philosophy and civil rights. George contested Nussbaum’s claim, given under oath, that no great thinker or civilization of classical antiquity held moral objections to homosexual conduct. George cited Nussbaum’s own published work, among many other sources, as contradicting her testimony.

George, a Catholic, has influenced Protestant and observant Jewish scholars and religious leaders, as well as Catholics. Under the auspices of the Institute on Religion and Public Life, he has worked closely with such figures as Fr. Richard John Neuhaus and Rabbi David Novak. His natural law arguments for traditional moral principles have frequently been invoked by Evangelical Christian figures such as James Dobson and Charles Colson.

• Natural Law Theory: Contemporary Essays, 1992. ISBN 0-19-823552-6
• Making Men Moral, 1995. ISBN 0-19-826024-5
• Natural Law and Moral Inquiry: Ethics, Metaphysics, and Politics in the Work of Germain Grisez, 1998. ISBN 0-87840-674-3
• In Defense of Natural Law, 1999. ISBN 0-19-826771-1
• The Autonomy of Law: Essays on Legal Positivism, 1999. ISBN 0-19-826790-8
• Natural Law and Public Reason, 2000. ISBN 0-87840-766-9
• Great Cases in Constitutional Law, 2000. ISBN 0-691-04952-1
• The Clash of Orthodoxies, 2001. ISBN 1-882926-62-5
• Natural Law, Liberalism, and Morality 2001. ISBN 0-19-924300-X
• Constitutional Politics: Essays on Constitution Making, Maintenance, and Change, 2001 ISBN 0-691-08869-1
• The Meaning of Marriage: Family, State, Market, And Morals, 2006 ISBN 1-890626-64-3

"Law, Democracy, and Moral Disagreement," Harvard Law Review, Vol. 110, pp. 1388-1406 (1997)

"Public Reason and Political Conflict: Abortion and Homosexual Acts," Yale Law Journal, Vol. 106, pp. 2475-2504 (1997)

"The Concept of Public Morality," American Journal of Jurisprudence, Vol. 45, pp. 17-31 (2000)

"Human Cloning and Embryo Research," Journal of Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics, Vol. 25, No. 1, pp. 3-20 (2004)

• Basic information from Princeton
• Madison Program website
• "Conservative Heavyweight: The Remarkable Mind of Robert P. George," by Anne Morse, Crisis, September 1, 2003
• "Online Resources," collected by RatzingerFanClub.com; lists links to articles, addresses and interviews, book reviews, etc.
• Articles in Touchstone magazine