Our friend at Cardozo Law, Faraz Sanei, passes along an announcement for an event in new York next week on international religious freedom, “Mapping the Landscape of International Religious Freedom Policy,” sponsored by the Religious Freedom Institute. Speakers include Sanei and Tom Farr, who spoke at our own conference on international religious freedom in Rome in 2014 (time flies). Looks very worthwhile. Details at the link.
While Marc went north to Skidmore, I traveled to lower Manhattan today, to deliver the annual Constitution Day Address at The King’s College. Excellent questions from the students. Thanks for having me!
I am up in lovely and bucolic Saratoga Springs at Skidmore College to deliver a lecture on “The Supreme Court’s New Traditionalism.” The talk lays out some general views on constitutional theory and then discusses an approach to constitutional interpretation that I have been developing in this paper and another paper forthcoming in short order.
Congratulations to our friend, Tom Berg, on this very interesting collection of essays on the relationship between intellectual property and patent law, on the one hand, and law and religion on the other. The book is Patents on Life: Religious, Moral, and Social Justice Aspects of Biotechnology and Intellectual Property (Cambridge University Press), edited by Thomas C. Berg, Roman Cholij, and Simon Ravenscroft.
“This volume brings together a unique collection of legal, religious, ethical, and political perspectives to bear on debates concerning biotechnology patents, or ‘patents on life’. The ever-increasing importance of biotechnologies has generated continual questions about how intellectual property law should treat such technologies, especially those raising ethical or social-justice concerns. Even after many years and court decisions, important contested issues remain concerning ownership of and rewards from biotechnology – from human genetic material to genetically engineered plants – and regarding the scope of moral or social-justice limitations on patents or licensing practices. This book explores a range of related issues, including questions concerning morality and patentability, biotechnology and human dignity, and what constitute fair rewards from genetic resources. It features high-level international, interfaith, and cross-disciplinary contributions from experts in law, religion, and ethics, including academics and practitioners, placing religious and secular perspectives into dialogue to examine the full implications of patenting life.”