April in Boston-- The RALS Conference is Coming!

The dates have been set for the 2008 conference of Religiously Affiliated Schools. The 2008 conference will be hosted by Boston College Law School from Sunday evening, April 6 through midday Tuesday, April 8. The Conference presentations and panels will center on the relationship between religion and a lawyer's professional development; that is, how faith can influence our students' growth as lawyers and our facultys' development as scholars, teachers, and mentors. This two-day event should be of great interest both to faculty and to student service professionals.

I anticipate that this will be the best RALS conference yet.

Good Things Happenin' at Fordham Law

Among the institutions most actively investigating the connection between faith and legal practice is Fordham Law. Much of these efforts are through Fordham's Institute on Religion, Law & Lawyer's Work, which runs programs in a number of areas, both focused on Catholic thought and more broadly addressing interfaith issues.

The Institute's Executive Director, Amy Uelmen, not only heads up these efforts, but publishes some very important work in the field. Her most recent article is Reconciling Evangelization and Dialogue Through Love of Neighbor, 52 Villanova L. Rev. 303 (2007), investigates the tension between evangelizing for a faith and maintaining a warm dialogue with other faiths, always a thorny issue.

Summer Missions

As I have made my way through the summer, it has occurred to me that I have never heard of a law school working on any sort of a summer mission. It seems like that would be a great project for faculty and students. Though it would have to be short due to the need of students to work in the summer, it might still be worthwhile. Has anyone every tried this? How did it work?

Another Good Read

One of the most stimulating articles I have read in a while is Ava Maria professor Lee Strang's The Role of the Christian Legal Scholar: The Call for a Modern Saint Benedict, 20 Notre Dame J. of Law, Ethics & Public Policy 59 (2006), which is available here via SSRN. Though it argues from a Christian perspective, many of its points would apply to scholars of other faiths, as well.

Strang argues that Christian legal scholars should have three distinct roles in the modern context-- building Christian law schools, rebuilding Christian law schools, and engaging in larger debates within the society.

Among other things, I find Strang's argument to be a personal challenge to make my own work more relevant and vigorous.

Wow! Now That's a Conference!

Former Baylor Law Professor Bill Underwood, now the president of Mercer University, has been busy pulling together a blockbuster conference in January/February, 2008 celebrating the New Baptist Covenant. As announced here, the conference will feature (among others):

Charles Adams
Tony Campolo
Jimmy Carter
Bill Clinton
Marian Wright Edelman
Al Gore
Senator Lindsey Graham
Senator Chuck Grassley
Mike Huckabee
Bill Moyers
Julie Pennington-Russell
William Shaw

Notably, this conference brings together black and white Baptist groups as part of the New Baptist Covenant.

Liberty U. Law School in the Trib

This recent article in the Chicago Tribune about Liberty and other new Christian law schools (quoting Boston College's John Garvey) led to this reaction at the TalkLeft blog.

My own reaction to the controversy (at the Law School Innovation blog) can be found here.

Please feel free to weigh in at any of these sites!

Summer Reading Recommendation

Harry G. Hutchison at George Mason was kind enough to send me his article just out in the Catholic University Law Review, Shaming Kindergartners? Channelling Dred Scott? Freedom of Expression Rights in Public Schools. At the core of his writing is an important question: "Why has the public square become so secular and so suspicious of religious expression?" In particular, Prof. Hutchison looks at public schools in pursuing this question.

The full cite for the artice is Harry G. Hutchison, Shaming Kindergartners? Channelling Dred Scott? Freedom of Expression Rights in Public Schools, 56 Catholic U. L. Rev. 361 (2007). A downloadable version is also available at SSRN at this link.