Announcement and Call
for Panels
Annual Meeting of the
American Society of Comparative Law
Comparative Law,
Faith and Religion:
The Role of Faith in
Law
October 26-28, 2017
American University
Washington College of Law
Washington D.C.
The American Society of Comparative Law and
American University College of Law invite all interested scholars to consider
submitting a panel proposal for the upcoming Annual Meeting of the American
Society of Comparative Law that will be held between Thursday, October 26, and
Saturday, October 28, 2017, at American University Washington College of Law,
Washington D.C. entitled Comparative law, Faith and Religion:
The Role of Faith in Law.
This conference was in large part inspired by
the work of the late Patrick Glenn on legal traditions. Professor Glenn
bravely undertook to “compare the world” with his emphasis on legal
“traditions” and by extending the scope of comparative law beyond what most
comparative scholars are comfortable with. Glenn looked beyond the civil
and common law legal traditions to the Chthonic, the near eastern Jewish and
Islamic legal traditions, and to the Confucian and Hindu traditions that
challenge our basic assumptions about the rule of law.
The conference organizers have distinguished
between faith and religion. The term “faith” is defined as having “complete
trust and confidence”, while the term religion is traditionally used to include
the doctrine and institutions. Of course, it is possible to have faith in
God or a religion but it is also possible to have faith in a secular text such
as the U.S. Constitution or a civil code, and this faith may be of such fervor
that it could be called a secular religion.
Examples of diverse topics that such a
conference could address are: (1) historical or modern day attitudes that
result in having faith in a legal tradition or developing religious attitudes
towards secular texts such as the U.S. constitution; (2) a comparison of
secular faith with religious faith in a legal system, perhaps looking at the
history and development of western democracies; (3) the role of Christianity in
development of common and/or civil law traditions; (4) comparative approaches
to legal ethics and the influence of religion on development and implementation
of ethical rules for lawyers and judges; (5) Islamic visions of dispute
settlement and the role of Islamic law in modern day commercial arbitration;
(6) the role of Catholicism in development of family law in Latin America; (7)
Laws of the nation’s secular authority as faithless law; (8) the continuing
influence of Hindu “law”; (9) whether there is such a thing as Buddhist law?;
(10) the influence of the Talmud on modern western legal systems or (11) the
challenge of teaching about religion in a law school setting; etc.
Interdisciplinary work is encouraged.
The Annual Meeting of the ASCL will have two
time slots for concurrent panels on Friday, October 27, 2017. One of these time
slots will include panels organized around a common theme, while the other time
slot will include panels arranged by region that may include more than one
theme on comparative law, faith, and religion. We will consider all panel
proposals but for the regional panels we especially encourage submissions
focused on Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, Latin America, the Middle East, and any
other region or subregion that includes developing countries.
The Annual Meeting Committee of the American
Society of Comparative Law will select the panels that will be held at the
meeting in consultation with American University Washington College of Law.
Panel proposals should include up to four speakers, a panel title, and a
one-to-two-paragraph description of the ideas that the panel will explore.
Panel proposals should be submitted via e-mail to Tra Pham at tpham@wcl.american.edu of American University Washington
College of Law no later than June 1, 2017, and copied to Máximo Langer from the
American Society of Comparative law at langer@law.ucla.edu.
