The American Society of Comparative Law has announced that the theme of this year’s meeting in Washington in October will be “Comparative Law, Faith & Religion: The Role of Faith in Law.” The Society has issued a call for panels with a deadline of June 1:
Examples of diverse topics that such a conference could address are: (1) historical or modern day attitudes that result in having faith in a legal tradition or developing religious attitudes towards secular texts such as the U.S. constitution; (2) a comparison of secular faith with religious faith in a legal system, perhaps looking at the history and development of western democracies; (3) the role of Christianity in development of common and/or civil law traditions; (4) comparative approaches to legal ethics and the influence of religion on development and implementation of
ethical rules for lawyers and judges; (5) Islamic visions of dispute settlement and the role of Islamic law in modern day commercial arbitration; (6) the role of Catholicism in development of family law in Latin America; (7) Laws of the nation’s secular authority as faithless law; (8) the continuing influence of Hindu “law”; (9) whether there is such a thing as Buddhist law?; (10) the influence of the Talmud on modern western legal systems or (11) the challenge of teaching about religion in a law school setting; etc. Interdisciplinary work is encouraged.
Further details are here.
This is very good and one can’t expect one conference to deal with everything, but it’s too bad it doesn’t also touch upon tribal religion/law, which doesn’t really have the religious-secular dichotomy that we have developed. See e.g. Raymond D. Austin, “Navajo Courts and Navajo Common Law: a Tradition of Tribal Self-Governance” (2009) pg. 40: “Traditional Navajos believe in the interconnectedness of all things, so they do not see law as a set of rules detached from daily life. Every day traditional Navajos live their laws with their spirituality, and to traditionalists, any attempt at distinguishing Dine [Navajo] law from spirituality is an improbable undertaking. All spiritual concepts and practices (what non-Indians call religion) are intertwined with the secular into the Dine Life Way, which, according to the Dine Fundamental Laws, is holistic.” (Footnote omitted.) I am not finished with the book yet, but it is fascinating to see how Navajo judges and public officials are making Dine Fundamental Laws the basis for their decision making.