Law and Religion:
Historical and Philosophical Perspectives
Princeton University | April 16 - 18, 2009

Organized by
The James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions, Princeton University

Sponsored by
The Center on Religion and the Constitution of The Witherspoon Institute
The Clough Center for the Study of Constitutional Democracy, Boston College
The Tikvah Project in Jewish Thought, Princeton University

For more information about the Law and Religion Consultation,
please contact Betsy Schneck at eschneck@Princeton.EDU
Conference Overview
The Center on Religion and the Constitution of the Witherspoon Institute organized a consultation on Law and Religion: Philosophical and Historical Perspectives, to be held at Princeton University on April 16 18, 2009. This consultation will bring together leading scholars in the fields of constitutional law, history and political philosophy to examine church state legal doctrines in American constitutional thought and discuss how the advance of secularism has changed the social and political dynamic between of law and religion in our public life. In an effort to promote comprehensive and meaningful discourse the interaction between law and religion, the conference format comprised five main sessions, consisting of one or two presentations about a particular question or issue, followed by a moderated discussion among a select group of scholars, attorneys, and judges. These questions consisted of the following:

Session I. What are the United States basic moral responsibilities to promote religious liberty abroad?
Thomas Farr - Georgetown University
Dan Philpot - University of Notre Dame

Session II. What are the state's basic responsibilities with regard to coercion of belief and practice and manipulation/unfair proselytizing of people within churches and religious communities?
Richard Garnett - Notre Dame Law School
Kent Greenawalt - Columbia Law School

Session III. Given that the founders believed in and, in fact, built what Frank Sorauf once described as an "implicit Protestant establishment", what are the coherent possibilities for an "originalist" jurisprudence of the Religion Clauses in the 21st century?
Steven Smith - University of San Diego Law School
Gerard V. Bradley - University of Notre Dame Law School

Session IV. The right/privilege conscientious objection and the right not be to be coerced into immoral cooperation with injustice?
Christopher O. Tollefsen - University of South Carolina
Christopher Wolfe - Marquette University

Session V. What are the unique and unprecedented challenges which this new force of globalization presents to religious liberty?
William Inboden - Legatum Institute for Global Development
Jose Casanova - Georgetown University

Conference discussants will receive papers ahead of the conference, and will be expected to prepare observations and further questions; discussants and paper givers are expected to participate in the full day and half of conversation about the topics. Edited papers will be published by the Witherspoon Institute in a volume of collected essays.

Consultation Discussants:
Diane Sykes - 7th Circuit Court of Appeals
David Novak - University of Toronto
Seamus Hasson - Beckett Fund
Robert P. George - Princeton University
Paul Clement - Georgetown University Law Center
Neil Gorsuch - 10th Circuit Court of Appeals
Matthew Frank - Radford University
David Forte - Cleveland-Marshal College