Religion & Law

Please mark your calendars for the next Scarpa Conference on Law, Politics, and Culture to be held on Friday, February 11, 2011, at Villanova Law.  As previously announced here, this year's version of the annual conference will be dedicated to study of the important and controversial new book A Republic of Statutes: The New American Constitution (Yale University Press, 2010).  The book's distinguished co-authors, Bill Eskridge (Yale) and John Ferejohn (NYU), will co-keynote the conference.  Other speakers will include Henry Paul Monaghan (Columbia), Thomas Merrill (Columbia), Jane Schacter (Stanford), David Stras (Minnesota Supreme Court), Kristin Hickman (Minnesota), Martin Shapiro (Boalt Hall), Ted Ruger (Penn), and Brennan (Villanova).  More information about attending the conference will be available here.  It's sure to be a great intellectual time -- please try to attend!

For those who really like to plan ahead, I am delighted to announce that the sixth-annual Scarpa Conference on Law, Politics, and Culture will feature John Finnis (Notre Dame and Oxford) as its keynote speaker.  The conference will be held on Friday, September 30, 2011.  Oxford University Press will soon publish The Collected Essays of John Finnis (in five volumes) and a new edition of his classic Natural Law and Natural Rights, which makes  2011 an especially apt time to celebrate and explore the work and legacy of Professor Finnis.  Details about the conference will follow in due course. We at Villanova are very pleased to be hosting this event to honor John Finnis and his pioneering contribution to theory on topics ranging from practical reason and nuclear deterrence to action theory and Shakespeare.