Legal Commentary

This past Saturday, April 4, the Drake Constitutional Law Center held its annual symposium.  The topic was "Global Perspectives on Religion, the State, and Constitutionalism."  Prawfs Blawger Rick Garnett was among the first rate speakers.  The papers will eventually be published in the Drake Law Review.  Abdullahi An-Na'im (Emory) spoke on the topic of "Religion, the State, and Constitutionalism in Islamic and Comparative Perspectives."  He has a new book out discussing the concept of "civic reason" (as distinct from "public reason" a la Rawls) that sounds fascinating.  I am always intrigued by the talks I've heard on Islam, and wish I knew more.  He said the concept of church-state separation relations is quite problematic conceptually from his perspective as a Muslim, though perhaps not for the reasons you might guess.  Tom Farr 's paper (Georgetown) was on "International Religious Freedom and American National Security in the 21st Century."  He also has a new book out, and argued that the State Department has done an inadequate job for various reasons of promoting religious liberty abroad, even though such a policy would promote democracy as well as American interests. 

Laura Jenkins (Cincinnati) discussed "Diversity and the Constitution in India:  What is Religious Freedom."  It was enlightening to learn more about laws enacted in certain Indian states supposedly to preclude "forcible" religious conversion that actually have other motives.  T. Jeremy Gunn (National ACLU) talked about "Secularism and Religious Freedom in France."  He explained how France has numerous laws that favor the Catholic church despite the nation's reputation for being so secular.  Indeed, I have a friend who is a law professor in France, from Wales, and who acts as a Protestant minister in France.  He says that he sometimes feels like the authorities think he's running a cult.  Frank Ravitch (Michigan State) discussed "Freedom of Religion Under Israeli Law."  He argued that there is a perhaps surprising amount of free excercise in Israel for numerous faiths, but highlighted the major conflicts between orthodox and more reform oriented Jews.  And Rick (Notre Dame) presented on "Church Autonomy, The First Amendment and Constitutionalism."  He explained that churches are crucial to constitutionalism because they are institutions where government power is limited.  I moderated.  I use a format in which a speaker only gets 15-20 minutes, and then is immediately subject to 15 minutes of questions or comments from the other panelists before the next speaker.  The speakers did an excellent job of engaging each other a great deal, while remaining civil on a difficult topic.

On Sunday, perhaps influenced by the symposium topic and time of the year, I went into a local Borders and read much of Thomas Merton's "New Seeds of Contemplation" which has been recommended to me by several people.  It's a fascinating book.  My favorite line was "You can only believe what you do not know.  As soon as you know it, you no longer believe it, at least not in the same way you know it"  Not exactly the empirical research approach.