The University of Alabama School of Law has posted podcasts of a symposium, held on October 14, entitled “Matters of Faith: Religious Experience and Legal Response.” Participants include Austin Sarat, Caroline Corbin, Meredith Render, Corey Brettschneider, Bryan Fair, Rick Garnett, Paul Horwitz, Steve Smith, and Bill Brewbaker. — MLM
Conference: Culture, Religion, and Conflict Resolution (Nov. 8, 2011)
The Cardozo Journal of Conflict Resolution is sponsoring a symposium, “Culture, Religion, and Conflict Resolution: What’s Identity and Faith Got To Do With It?,” on November 8 in New York. Scholars will examine the effect of religion on estate planning, marriage and family life, and business dealings. Details are here. — MLM
Is Sovereignty Protestant?
I spent last weekend participating in an interesting Federalist Society/Liberty Fund colloquium, “International Law, Foreign Law, and the Constitution.” Some of readings for the colloquium discussed the development of the concept of sovereignty in international law. It’s striking how closely the concept relates, historically, to the Protestant Reformation. The great theoreticians of sovereignty were mostly, though not exclusively, Protestants seeking to provide an intellectual grounding for the Westphalian system, people like Grotius and Vattel, though Vattel is more an Enlightenment than a Christian thinker, it seems to me. Even Bodin, the 16th Century French writer credited with the first comprehensive theory of sovereignty, was a crypto-Protestant, at least according to the Tudor secret police.
The core components of Westphalian sovereignty were the equality and independence of states. Each state had an equal right to govern itself and no state had the right to meddle in another’s internal affairs. The non-interference principle extended especially to religion. According to Vattel, for example, the
Law of Nations, a set of rules derived from natural law, prohibited attempts to impose the “true faith” on a state from the outside. In fact, Vattel argued, even peaceful missionary work was prohibited, unless the local government allowed it. (Vattel made an exception for the Twelve Apostles; they had resisted the state’s attempts to silence them, he conceded, but they could perform miracles). Sovereignty, presented as a matter of natural law, greatly assisted the Protestant Reformers, who were seeking a principled, “neutral” justification for resisting the Catholic Church’s assertions of universal jurisdiction. It takes a natural law to beat a natural law.
Protestants and Catholics don’t fight about these things so much anymore, but one can see a similar pattern in contemporary disputes about international human rights. Even though contemporary human rights law tends to speak in a secular idiom, it’s hard to miss the strong religious, natural law aspect of some of its key concepts, such as “human dignity.” International human rights advocates assert that these concepts are universally true and must apply as a matter of law everywhere. States that resist, in turn, often assert their sovereignty, and their position is often a moral one: “You can’t impose your norms here, because this is our country, and we have the right to decide.” Sovereignty thus continues to serve its historical function as a mechanism for resisting centralized moral authority in a fight about ultimate value. – MLM
The Retributivist Tradition and Its Future: A Conference at St. John’s on November 4
If you are in or about New York City on November 4, please consider
attending The Retributivist Tradition And Its Future at St. John’s University School of Law. The conference will take up many of the chapters in Retributivism: Essays on Theory and Policy (Mark D. White, ed., 2011). My own small contribution to the conference, which I’m still chewing over, might be titled something like, “The Retributivst Tradition As Its Future.”
The conference description follows and the program is after the jump. Hope you can make it.
Retributivism as a justification of punishment is a very old idea, with sources in ancient codes of religious law and morality. After a period of dormancy in the 20th century, retributivism is now ascendant again as a theory of punishment, as scholars have reinterpreted the commitment to just desert in novel and provocative ways.
This conference, The Retributivist Tradition and Its Future, brings together leading thinkers in punishment theory to reflect on retributivism’s past and present, with an eye toward what retributivism and punishment theory generally might become. Many of the speakers are also contributors to the recently published volume, Retributivism: Essays on Theory and Policy (Mark D. White, ed., OUP 2011), which will also be considered at the conference.
Conference on Religious-Defamation Bans, Islamophobia, and the First Amendment (Nov. 4)
The Federalist Society’s International and National Security Law Practice Group is hosting an interesting-looking conference in Washington on November 4 on religious-defamation bans, Islamophobia, and the First Amendment. Speakers include Bruce Bawer, Naser Khader, Nina Shea, Paul Marshall, Paul Diamond, Jacob Mchangama, Mark Durie, Amjad M. Khan, David Forte, David Rivkin, and Samuel Tadros. A complete description is here. — MLM
Liveblogging Forum 2000: Religious and Secular Law
(UPDATE: A video of the panel discussion, “Religious and Secular Law,” can be viewed in the player below. This post was originally posted on October 11, 2011 – ARH)
I just participated in Forum 2000’s final law-and-religion panel, “Religious and Secular Law.” The panel was chaired by Anna Teresa Arco, the Chief Feature Writer for the Catholic Herald, who opened the panel with an erudite introduction to the topic. In my remarks, I argued that the relationship between secular and religious law will be a crucial issue in the years ahead. Religion is resurging around the world, and there will likely be many occasions of conflict between secular and religious law. I discussed two doctrinal examples from the United States: the ministerial exception, currently before the Court in Hosanna-Tabor, and restrictions on religious practice under Employment Division v. Smith. Czech Judge Ivana Hrdličková followed with a discussion of the interaction between Islamic and secular law in Europe, especially with regard to family law. Professor Luboš Krobáček, a scholar of Islamic civilization at Charles University in Prague, closed the panel with an overview of the different schools of Islamic law. – MLM
[vodpod id=Video.15563504&w=425&h=350&fv=bufferlength%3D5%26amp%3Brepeat%3Dalways%26amp%3Bstretching%3Duniform%26amp%3Bcontrolbar.position%3Dover%26amp%3Bcontrolbar.idlehide%3Dtrue%26amp%3Bdock%3Dfalse%26amp%3Bicons%3Dtrue%26amp%3Bautostart%3Dfalse%26amp%3Bimage%3D%2Fimg%2Flayout%2F_default3.jpg%26amp%3Bstreamer%3Drtmp%3A%2F%2Fbiztube.cz%3A443%2Fforum2000%26amp%3Bfile%3DKH1110-blok3.mp4]
Call for Papers: Religious Traditions and Business Behavior at Maryland
The Henry Kaufman Forum on Religious Traditions and Business Behavior at the University of Maryland Business School has issued a call for papers on two subjects:
First, what do the world’s major organized religious traditions – Protestantism, Catholicism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism – proscribe 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?
Those who are interested in the conference can find more information here. — MOD
Lecture: November 1 — Glendon on Cicero and Burke at Chicago
Another fantastic-looking conference co-sponsored by The Lumen Christi Institute and The Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago: Professor Mary Ann Glendon will speak at the University of Chicago on November 1 about “Cicero and Burke on Politics as a Vocation” (Mandel Hall at 7:00 pm).
While I’m at it, I want to note the publication of Professor Glendon’s
book, The Forum and the Tower: How Scholars and Politicians Have Imagined the World From Plato to Eleanor Roosevelt (OUP 2011). The publisher’s description follows.
In The Forum and the Tower, Glendon examines thinkers who have collaborated with leaders, from ancient Syracuse to the modern White House, in a series of brisk portraits that explore the meeting of theory and reality. Glendon discusses a roster of great names, from Edmund Burke to Alexis de Tocqueville, Machiavelli to Rousseau, John Locke to Max Weber, down to Charles Malik, who helped Eleanor Roosevelt draft the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights. With each, she explores the eternal questions they faced, including: Is politics such a dirty business that I shouldn’t get involved? Will I betray my principles by pursuing public office? Can I make a difference, or will my efforts be wasted? Even the most politically successful intellectuals, she notes, did not all end happily. The brilliant Marcus Tullius Cicero, for example, reached the height of power in the late Roman Republic, then fell victim to intrigue, assassinated at Mark Antony’s order. Yet others had a lasting impact. The legal scholar Tribonian helped Byzantine Emperor Justinian I craft the Corpus Juris Civilis, which became a bedrock of Western law. Portalis and Napoleon emulated them, creating the civil code that the French emperor regarded as his greatest legacy.
Formerly ambassador to the Vatican and an eminent legal scholar, Glendon knows these questions personally. Here she brings experience and expertise to bear in a timely, and timeless, study.
Conference: October 19 — Bellah’s “Religion in Human Evolution” at Chicago
For those who will be in Chicago next Wednesday at 4:00, renowned sociologist of religion Robert Bellah will be speaking about his new book, Religion in Human Evolution (HUP 2011 — noted here on CLR Forum) at the University of Chicago in Swift Lecture Hall. — MOD
Liveblogging Forum 2000: Religion, Ethics, and Law
This morning, I participated in Forum 2000’s second law-and-religion panel, “Religion, Ethics, and Law.” The panel (below) addressed the growing “divorce” between law and moral principles and the influence of secularization on law and
ethics. The panel was chaired by Jiří Pehe, Director of NYU-Prague. Tomáš Halík, a sociologist and President of the Czech Christian Academy, opened the panel by discussing the different concepts of law in Islam, Judaism, and Christianity. The first two religions, Halík said, are essentially about law, unlike Christianity, which is essentially about faith; the first two emphasize orthopraxy, while Christianity emphasizes orthodoxy. He noted that Western law has been influenced both by Christian roots and by the secularizing effect of the Enlightenment, which was itself “the unwanted child of Christianity.” I followed with a discussion of the distinction between moral and legal advice in American lawyers’ ethics. Over time, I showed, American legal ethics have minimized the lawyer’s role as moral counselor; although 100 years ago a lawyer had a duty to impress upon his client the need for “strict compliance” with “moral law,” nowadays a lawyer’s duty is to provide legal, not moral advice. I argued that the change could be understood, in part, as an effect of secularization. William Cook, Professor of History and Religion at SUNY, discussed Tocqueville’s insights into private associations and their role in promoting democracy. Günther Virt, Professor of Theology at the University of Vienna, spoke about translating faith commitments into public policy arguments, specifically, his experience working on bioethics committees in the Council of Europe and the European Union. (A great line: the increasing number of ethics committees in the West today is evidence of an ethical crisis). He also discussed human rights; although human rights can be justified intellectually without religion, he argued, religion provides the necessary 
motivation for honoring human rights in particular circumstances. Vartan Gregorian, President of the Carnegie Corporation, ended the panel with a discussion of the dialectic between faith and reason in all three Abrahamic religions. He argued that the key concept in all these religions is not conflict, but synthesis, between faith and reason. – MLM
*UPDATE: You can now watch the video from the “Religion, Ethics and Law” Panel here. -ARH[vodpod id=Video.15541931&w=425&h=350&fv=bufferlength%3D5%26amp%3Brepeat%3Dalways%26amp%3Bstretching%3Duniform%26amp%3Bcontrolbar.position%3Dover%26amp%3Bcontrolbar.idlehide%3Dtrue%26amp%3Bdock%3Dfalse%26amp%3Bicons%3Dtrue%26amp%3Bautostart%3Dfalse%26amp%3Bimage%3D%2Fimg%2Flayout%2F_default3.jpg%26amp%3Bstreamer%3Drtmp%3A%2F%2Fbiztube.cz%3A443%2Fforum2000%26amp%3Bfile%3Dforum2000-forumhall-20111011-1.f4v]