Legal Ethics Teaching in Catholic Higher Education: Experiences from the Faculty of Law and Political Sciences at Pázmány Péter Catholic University

Abstract

There is a wide range of approaches to teaching legal ethics across the world. The model adopted by any given law school is shaped by external regulatory frameworks for legal education as well as by the institution’s own academic traditions. The most common approach is to teach the professional ethical standards of the various legal professions within one or more dedicated courses. Catholic universities, however, must also take into account the Apostolic Constitution Ex corde Ecclesiae (1990), which calls on Catholic higher education not only to transmit academic knowledge but also to support students in acquiring and practising moral principles that permeate the whole of human life and ultimately lead towards its fullness. This understanding is closely related to the Aristotelian tradition and to educational approaches that view the teaching of professional ethics as a process of moral character formation. From this perspective, the aim of legal ethics education is to foster a strong ethical orientation in future lawyers, enabling them to recognise ethical dilemmas in their everyday professional practice and to seek out and choose ethically sound responses in a conscious and habitual manner. At the Faculty of Law and Political Sciences of Pázmány Péter Catholic University, the educational framework developed since the mid-1990s has likewise sought to strengthen the moral character of law students. Within the curriculum, a virtue-ethics approach plays a central role, focusing on the development of moral dispositions that shape conduct throughout life and give it deeper meaning.