The Diane and Guilford Glazer Institute for Jewish Studies at Pepperdine has announced its events for Fall 2013, including talks on civil and Jewish law. A very impressive list indeed. Check it out here.
Panel: “Is Europe Joining the International Religious Freedom Bandwagon?” (Sept. 18)
On September 18, the Berkley Center at Georgetown will host a panel discussion, “Is Europe Joining the International Religious Freedom Bandwagon?”:
Growing international threats to religious freedom are coming under increasing scrutiny by Western democracies. Long a foreign policy emphasis in the United States, and more recently in Canada, the crisis in international religious freedom (IRF) is gaining greater attention in Europe, especially in Italy and the United Kingdom. Can these nations be effective in promoting international religious freedom? Will their own domestic struggles with religious freedom handicap their efforts abroad?
CLR Forum Guest Commentator Pasquale Annicchino will be a panelist. Details are here.
Conference: “Religious Freedom and Equal Treatment: An International Look” (Oct. 11-12)
Brooklyn Law School will host a symposium, “Religious Freedom and Equal Treatment: An International Look,” on Oct. 11-12. Details are here.
Call for Papers: “Love and Law”
The Helen and Elinor Nootbar Institute on Law, Religion and Ethics at Pepperdine has issued a call for papers for an upcoming conference, “Love and Law: What Would Law Be Like if We Organized It Around the Value of Christian Love [Agape]?” The conference, which already has quite an impressive lineup of speakers, will take place in Malibu on February 7-8, 2014. Details are here.
Joseph & Castan, “The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights”
In September Oxford University Press publishes a new edition of The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights by Sarah Joseph (Monash University) and Melissa Castan (Monash University). The publisher’s description follows.
Now in its third edition, this book is the authoritative text on one of the world’s most important human rights treaties, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. The Covenant is of universal relevance. Adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1966 and in force from 1976, it commits the signatories and parties to respect the civil and political freedoms and rights of individuals. Monitored by the UN Human Rights Committee, the Covenant ratified by the majority of UN member states.
The book meticulously extracts and analyzes the jurisprudence over nearly forty years of the UN Human Rights Committee, on each of the various ICCPR rights, including the right to life, the right to freedom from torture, the right of freedom of religion, the right of freedom of expression, and the right to privacy, as well as admissibility criteria under the First Optional Protocol. Key miscellaneous issues, such as reservations, derogations, and denunciations, are also thoroughly assessed.
Comprehensively indexed and cross-referenced, this book offers elegant and straight-forward access to the jurisprudence of the Human Rights Committee and other UN human rights treaty bodies. Presented in a clear and illuminating manner, it will be of use to the judiciary, human rights practitioners, human rights activists, government institutions, academics, and students alike.
Conference: Religious Traditions and Business Behavior (Oct. 31)
The Robert H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland will host a conference on religious traditions and business behavior on October 31:
This forum explores two central questions in the relationship between the world’s major religious traditions and the business behavior of adherents to those traditions:
First, what do the world’s major organized religious traditions – Protestantism, Catholicism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism – prescribe about business and financial ethics and behavior?
Second, how and why have business and financial actors seriously compromised the leading religious traditions of their cultures?
By interrogating these two core questions, the conference will yield insights valuable to contemporary business and religious leaders about abiding questions such as: Do the scriptures and doctrines of these religions appear to have had a marked effect on financial behavior? Does religion appear to be a more potent or less potent influence than business ethics courses in fostering sound, ethical, and socially responsible financial behavior? How can religion best be promulgated to make financial behavior more sound, ethical, and socially responsible?
Speakers include past CLR Forum Guest Ron Colombo, who will present a paper, “Religious Liberty and the Business Corporation.” Details are here.
ICLARS Panel: Is Religion Special?
Along with my St. John’s colleague, Marc DeGirolami, and other law and religion scholars from around the world, I spent part of last week at the biannual ICLARS Conference, hosted this year at William and Mary and the University of Virginia. Kudos and thanks to the indefatigable Cole Durham and other conference organizers for an exceptionally helpful and fun event!
I spoke at Friday’s afternoon session, on a panel, “Is Religion Special?”, moderated by Edward Gaffney of Valparaiso. My co-panelists were Barry Bussey of the Canadian Council of Christian Charities and Micah Schwartzman of the University of Virginia. Bussey presented a paper titled, “Does Religion Merit Special Protection in the Law? (Within the Canadian Legal Context).” Early Canadian Supreme Court cases stressed the country’s Christian heritage, he explained. Over time, however, the Court moved to a concern with religion in general. Now, equality often trumps freedom of religion in the Canadian case law–religious freedom is often the “loser.” I presented my working project on the rise of the Nones–the group of people who claim no religious affiliation–and what it might mean for the definition of religion in American law. As an example, I used the recent “Psychic Sophie” case, in which the Fourth Circuit held that “following one’s inner flow” does not qualify as a religion meriting constitutional and statutory protection. Schwartzman closed the panel with his draft, “Religion as a Legal Proxy.” He addressed the argument that, even if religion as such doesn’t merit special legal protection, religion is a proxy for other comprehensive values that do. Schwartzman is skeptical of this argument. For one thing, he said, interests besides religion–conscience, for example–might also serve as effective proxies for other comprehensive values, without raising religion’s particular concerns.
Panel on Religious Symbols, Public Reason, the State, et alia
I was fortunate to participate in an excellent panel at William & Mary 
yesterday, as part of the wonderfully massive and variegated International Consortium for Law and Religion Studies conference in Virginia. The overall theme of the conference organized by the marvelously active Cole Durham and Brett Scharffs was “Religion, Democracy, and Equality.”
Our panel, moderated by Professor Mark Movsesian, was called, “Religious Symbols, Public Reason, and the State,” and my co-panelists were Professor Perry Dane (Rutgers) and Professor Javier-Martinez Torrón (Complutense, Spain).
Perry’s talk, entitled “Endorsement, Legal Reason, and the Misguided Quest for Reasonableness,” was a penetrating and highly persuasive critique of the endorsement test. Perry sharply criticized approaches to law (not only in this context) that highlight feelings and sensibilities, and that ask judges to take on what he (channeling Philip Rieff) called “therapeutic” inquiries by reference to “reasonable” beliefs. He talked about endorsement in part in the context of the upcoming legislative prayer decision that the Court will hear in the new term. As a separationist–and, as I was very interested to learn, as Justice Brennan’s law clerk during the term that Brennan dissented in Marsh v. Chambers–Perry was skeptical that he would approve of either the reasons for changes to endorsement that the current Supreme Court might make or the new direction that it might choose (he was specifically critical of the possibility that the Court will apply an originalist methodology).
I was second and presented my co-authored paper (with Kevin Walsh), “Judging Theory.” The paper does not address law and religion head on, but it does so at an angle. The core claim of the paper is the comparative thesis that a judge’s institutional and role-based self-understanding is more important in constitutional adjudication that the collection of ideas that commonly travel under the banner “constitutional theory.” Kevin and I examine the extra-judicial (articles and books) and judicial writing (opinions) of two prominent judges–Judge Richard Posner and Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III in several controversial and hot-button contexts (Second Amendment, partial-birth abortion, and the Establishment Clause (there’s the law and religion!)) to make the claim stick.
Finally, Javier discussed religious symbols proper with a particular focus on Lautsi v. Italy. Javier argued that in the European context, where there is no mandated establishment provision that applies to all nations in the Convention on Human Rights, it is wrong to superimpose that mandate through other provisions (provisions guaranteeing equality, for example). Javier further argued–similarly to Perry–that legal claims cannot and should not consist in feelings of “difference” from the majority. As he put it, “What’s wrong with being different?”
Announcing the Joint Colloquium in Law and Religion
The Center for Law and Religion at St. John’s Law School and Villanova Law 
School are pleased to announce an exciting new seminar for Spring 2014, Joint Colloquium in Law and Religion.
This course invites leading law and religion scholars to make presentations to a small audience of students and faculty. The 
schools will be connected through video link so that students and faculty at both schools will be able to participate synchronously in a virtual classroom seminar experience. Mark and I are absolutely delighted to be working on this project with Villanova Law School Vice Dean and Professor Michael Moreland.
The following speakers have confirmed:
January 27: Michael Walzer (Institute for Advanced Study) (at St. John’s)
February 10: Sarah Barringer Gordon (University of Pennsylvania Law School) (at Villanova)
February 24: Kent Greenawalt (Columbia Law School) (at St. John’s)
March 17: Donald L. Drakeman (Cambridge University) (at St. John’s)
March 31: Kristine Kalanges (Notre Dame Law School) (at St. John’s)
April 14: Steven D. Smith (University of San Diego Law School) (at Villanova)
Topics will be announced at a future date.
For more information, or if you would like to attend the sessions, please contact the Colloquium’s co-organizers, Marc DeGirolami (degirolm@stjohns.edu), Mark Movsesian (movsesim@stjohns.edu), and Michael Moreland (moreland@law.villanova.edu).
Movsesian & DeGirolami at ICLARS Conference Next Week
Next week, Marc DeGirolami and I will be participating in the biannual conference of the International Center for Law and Religion Studies, which will take place at the University of Virginia and William and Mary Law School. I’ll present a paper on the rise of the Nones and moderate a panel on religious symbols and public reason. Marc will present a paper on “Judging Theory” (co-authored with former CLR Forum Guest Kevin Walsh). Some other CLR Forum Guests will also be presenting papers, including Perry Dane, Michael Helfand, and Barak Richman. Details are here. If you’re in the area, stop by and say hello!