The Álvaro d’Ors Chair of Law, Culture and Society is committed to promoting, producing and spreading innovative scholarship on the interaction of law and society in our globalized world.

Established in 2020, the chair honors the memory of the University of Navarra Law Professor Álvaro d’Ors and is funded by the Fundación Ciudadanía y Valores (FUNCIVA).

The Chair focuses primarily on three areas:

- Christianity and Global Law. This research project analyzes both historical and contemporary Christian sources and dimensions of global law and includes critical perspectives from various religious and philosophical traditions.

- Spirituality and Society. This research project explores potential connections between law, politics, business, and spirituality as well as some of the legal implications of these connections.

- Law and the Christian Tradition in Latin America. This research project examines the lives and works of key personalities in Latin American legal history, in particular how their Christian faith was a factor in molding the evolution of law in their countries and the region.

Professor Rafael Domingo Oslé is the holder of the Álvaro d'Ors Chair of Law, Culture and Society.

About Álvaro d'Ors

Álvaro d’Ors Pérez-Peix was a great polymath of Spanish education of the twentieth century and a central figure in the development of the University of Navarra. A distinguished scholar of antiquity, d’Ors devoted himself to the advance of scholarship, wisdom, and knowledge from a Christian perspective. While he is best known for his work on Roman law, he also made significant contributions to political theology, political philosophy, legal theory, and legal history.

Álvaro d’Ors Pérez-Peix was born in Barcelona, on 14 April 1915. His father, Eugenio d’Ors Rovira (1881–1954), was a distinguished philosopher, gifted essayist, and remarkable art critic who led the Catalan cultural renaissance of the early twentieth century (Noucentisme). Xénius, as he was often called, is considered one of the more influential thinkers of Spanish culture of the first half of the twentieth century. Álvaro’s mother, María Pérez-Peix (1879–1972), was a sculptor of great artistic sensitivity and manual ability.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, the family moved to Madrid, and Álvaro d’Ors was admitted to the Instituto-Escuela, a secular institution founded in 1918 in accordance with the leading European pedagogical trends. In 1931 he spent the summer in London, where his daily visits to the department of Greece and Rome at the British Museum helped him to mature his decision to devote his life to the classical world.

After graduation in Law in 1939, d’Ors defended his doctoral dissertation at the Central University of Madrid (1941), and two years later he became a tenured professor of Roman law at the University of Granada. In 1944 he moved to the University of Santiago of Compostela, where he spent seventeen prolific years. In Santiago he married Palmira Lois in 1945, and their first children were born. In 1953 d’Ors was appointed director of the Spanish Law Institute (Istituto Giuridico Spagnolo) in Rome. For twenty years, he travelled regularly to Rome to mentor young Spanish law scholars. His stays in Rome allowed him to keep permanent contact with the Italian Romanists and to engage them in intellectual debate and historical research.

In 1961 d’Ors moved to the University of Navarra, where he remained a full professor in the Law School and the School of Canon Law (1961–85), an emeritus professor (1985–89), and ultimately an honorary professor (1989–2004). In recognition of his academic excellence, he received honorary doctorates from the University of Toulouse, the University of Coimbra, and La Sapienza University in Rome. In 1990 d’Ors was awarded the University of Navarra’s Gold Medal by grand chancellor Álvaro del Portillo in recognition of his efforts to build up the university library structure and expand and strengthen the law school.

Álvaro d’Ors died at the University of Navarra Hospital in Pamplona on 1 February 2004, at the age of eighty-eight. Ten years later, in 2014, a bust of Álvaro d’Ors was erected on the university campus at the entrance to the University of Navarra Library.

Álvaro d’Ors wrote more than eight hundred academic publications from 1939 to 2004, thousands of op-eds and notes to newspapers and magazines, and several thousand letters with intellectual reflections.

Selected works of Álvaro d’Ors

· Epigrafía jurídica de la España romana. Madrid: Instituto Nacional de Estudios Jurídicos, 1953.

· De la Guerra y de la Paz. Madrid: Rialp, 1954.

· El Código de Eurico. Edición, Palingenesia, Índices. Roma, Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 1960.

· Papeles del oficio universitario. Madrid: Rialp, 1961.

· Sistema de las Ciencias. 4 vols.Pamplona: Eunsa, 1969–77.

· Escritos varios sobre el Derecho en crisis. Roma, Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 1973.

· Ensayos de Teoría Política. Pamplona: Eunsa, 1979.

· Nuevos papeles del oficio universitario. Madrid: Rialp, 1980.

· La ley Flavia municipal. Texto y comentario. Roma: Pontifical Lateran University, 1986.

· La violencia y el orden. Madrid: Dyrsa, 1987.

· Parerga historica. Pamplona: Eunsa, 1997.

· Las “Quaestiones” de Africano. Roma: Pontifical Lateran University, Roma, 1997.

· La posesión del espacio. Madrid: Civitas, 1998.

· Nueva introducción al estudio del Derecho. Madrid: Civitas, 1999.

· Crítica romanística. Santiago de Compostela: Universidad de Santiago de Compostela, 1999.

· Derecho y sentido común. Siete lecciones de derecho natural como límite del derecho positivo. 3rd ed. Madrid: Civitas, 2001.

· Bien común y enemigo público. Madrid: Marcial Pons, 2002.

· Derecho privado romano. Edited by Xavier d’Ors. 10th ed. Pamplona: Eunsa, 2004.