On the June 3-4 the Witherspoon Institute convened a private consultation of its Task Force on Conscience Protection of  The William E. and Carol G. Simon Center on Religion and the Constitution. The Task Force is chaired by Helen Alvaré, a Senior Fellow of the Witherspoon Institute and an associate professor of family law at George Mason University. With scholars from the fields of law, medicine, political science, theology, and philosophy, and including the contributions of practitioners in health care and public policy as well as academics, the two-day meeting covered the questions surrounding the principle of religious conscience as it manifests itself in an institutional context.

Joining the deliberations of the task force where distinguished scholars and advocates of the rights of conscience, including:
Matthew Bowman, Alliance Defense Fund
Gerard V. Bradley, Notre Dame Law School
Farr Curlin, The University of Chicago
Richard Doerflinger, Unites States Conference of Catholic Bishops
Very Rev. Anthony Fisher, Diocese of Paramatta, Australia
Richard Garnett, Notre Dame Law School
R. Kent Greenawalt, Columbia Law School
Kevin J. Hasson, The Becket Fund
Allen Hertzke, University of Oklahoma
Donald Landry, Columbia University Medical Center
Yuval Levin, The Ethics and Public Policy Center
Leonard J. Nelson, Cumberland School of Law
Anthony Picarello, Unites States Conference of Catholic Bishops
Daniel Sulmasy, The University of Chicago
Christopher Tollefsen, University of South Carolina
Robert Vischer, University of St. Thomas - Minnesota

From the consultation's papers and discussions will be prepared a monograph on institutional religious conscienceby the task force and published by The Institute.

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