Pepperdine University School of Law’s Nootbaar Institute  is soliciting papers for its upcoming conference, Religious Critiques of Law. The conference will be held on March 9-10, 2017. Here’s a description, from the conference organizers:

In his book, American Lawyers and Their Communities, Tom Shaffer envisions a downtown street. On one side of the street is a house of worship; on the other is a courthouse. According to Shaffer, law schools train lawyers to look at the religious congregation from the courthouse—that is to analyze the problems the religious congregation creates for the law. Shaffer contends that too often, law schools ignore the possibility that there might be a view of the courthouse from the house of worship.

Prophetic witness is discounted in law teaching. Our part of the academy, more than any other, has systematically discouraged and disapproved of invoking the religious tradition as important or even interesting. It ignores the community of the faithful so resolutely that even its students who have come to law school from the community of the faithful learn to look at the [religious congregation] from the courthouse, rather than at the courthouse from [religious congregation].

Shaffer encourages lawyers to “walk across the street” and look at the courthouse from their religious congregation.

At this conference, some speakers will support Shaffer’s notion that religious critiques of law are of important value to our legal discourse. Others will challenge that notion. It is our hope that the conference will draw speakers from a wide variety of religious traditions who will address the law from their tradition. We welcome speakers who might address the history of religious influence on law. Any subject area of law is fair game, but we want to encourage speakers to address subjects that do not ordinarily come in for religious critique—property, contracts, torts, etc. We hope some speakers will address the legal profession and legal education from religious perspectives. We hope that you can join us.

Information on the conference and paper submission guidelines can be found here.