RELATED PROJECT
RELATED PROGRAM
PUBLICATION
September 1, 2012Report of the Georgetown Symposium on What's So Special About Religious Freedom?
EVENTS
May 31, 2013Markets, Justice, and the Law
May 31, 2013
The Good Muslim and Religious Freedom
AT THE CENTER
RELATED RESOURCES: JEWISH
November 17, 2011
What's So Special About Religious Freedom?
Religious freedom has been called America’s “first freedom.” But does it warrant such a special status? What, if anything, distinguishes religious freedom from other protected rights like the freedom of speech or assembly? Is religious freedom a right that stands on its own, or is it a subset of a broader freedom of conscience?
How such questions are answered carries profound consequences for the treatment of religion in American public life and in American foreign policy. On Thursday, November 17, 2011, the Religious Freedom Project hosted a keynote debate at Georgetown University on the question of the uniqueness of religious freedom. Debating this critical issue were Harvard Law Professor Noah Feldman and Stanford Law Professor Michael McConnell.
Coinciding with the debate, the event featured two related panels to examine the meaning and reach of religious freedom. The morning panel explored the Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, and secular influences on religious freedom in the West. The afternoon panel addressed the universality of religious freedom and its compatibility with non-Western cultures.
How such questions are answered carries profound consequences for the treatment of religion in American public life and in American foreign policy. On Thursday, November 17, 2011, the Religious Freedom Project hosted a keynote debate at Georgetown University on the question of the uniqueness of religious freedom. Debating this critical issue were Harvard Law Professor Noah Feldman and Stanford Law Professor Michael McConnell.
Coinciding with the debate, the event featured two related panels to examine the meaning and reach of religious freedom. The morning panel explored the Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, and secular influences on religious freedom in the West. The afternoon panel addressed the universality of religious freedom and its compatibility with non-Western cultures.
Schedule
10:30am - 12:00pm Panel 1: The Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, and Secular Sources of Religious Freedom in the West
Panel Discussion with Brad Gregory, David Little, David Novak, and Dorinda Outram
12:15pm - 1:45pm Keynote Debate: Is Religious Freedom an Independent or Derivative Human Right?
Noah Feldman and Michael McConnell
2:00pm - 3:30pm Panel 2: The Universality of Religious Freedom and its Compatibility with Non-Western Cultures
Panel Discussion with Peter Danchin, John Finnis, and Mona Siddiqui
10:30am - 12:00pm Panel 1: The Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, and Secular Sources of Religious Freedom in the West
Panel Discussion with Brad Gregory, David Little, David Novak, and Dorinda Outram
12:15pm - 1:45pm Keynote Debate: Is Religious Freedom an Independent or Derivative Human Right?
Noah Feldman and Michael McConnell
2:00pm - 3:30pm Panel 2: The Universality of Religious Freedom and its Compatibility with Non-Western Cultures
Panel Discussion with Peter Danchin, John Finnis, and Mona Siddiqui
Featuring
Noah Feldman
Noah Feldman is Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and an Adjunct Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. He specializes in constitutional studies, with an emphasis on the relationship between law and religion, constitutional design, and the history of legal theory. Feldman is the author of three books: Divided By God: America’s Church-State Problem and What We Should Do About It (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005); What We Owe Iraq: War and the Ethics of Nation Building (Princeton University Press, 2004); and After Jihad: America and the Struggle for Islamic Democracy (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2003). Feldman has also been on faculty at the New York University School of Law. In 2003, he served as a senior constitutional advisor to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq and advised members of the Iraqi Governing Council on the drafting of the Transitional Administrative Law. He is a contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine. Feldman holds degrees from Harvard University, Oxford and Yale Law School.
Michael McConnell
Michael McConnell is Richard and Frances Mallery Professor of Law at Stanford University Law School. Educated at Michigan State University (BA '76) and the University of Chicago Law School (JD '79), he is an accomplished litigator, judge and professor of law. He has argued a dozen cases before the U.S. Supreme Court, served as a federal appellate judge for the Tenth Circuit and taught law at the University of Utah, the University of Chicago, Harvard and Stanford. Now retired from the bench, he is a professor at Stanford University and director of the Stanford Constitutional Law Center. His particular areas of interest and expertise in Constitutional law include freedom of speech and religion, the relationship between individuals and government, and originalism.
Participants
Peter Danchin
Peter Danchin is Associate Professor of Law as well as the Director of the International and Comparative Law Program at the University of Maryland School of Law. From 2000-06 he served as the director of the human rights program at the Columbia...
John Finnis
John M. Finnis is Biolchini Family Professor of Law at Notre Dame University and Professor of Law and Legal Philosophy at Oxford University. Finnis has worked in the realms of moral, political, and legal theory and is also a noted scholar of...
Brad Gregory
Brad S. Gregory is the Dorothy G. Griffin Associate Professor of Early Modern European History at the University of Notre Dame. Prior to his work at Notre Dame, Gregory was Assistant Professor of History at Stanford University and a Junior Fellow...
David Little
David Little will be exploring protestant contributions to religious liberty in colonial America before the Founding for the Christianity and Freedom Project. He is a research fellow at the Berkley Center. He retired in 2009 as T.J. Dermot Dunphy...
David Novak
David Novak holds the J. Richard and Dorothy Shiff Chair of Jewish Studies as Professor of the Study of Religion and Professor of Philosophy at the University of Toronto since 1997. He is a member of The Centre for Ethics, a part of the Joint...
Dorinda Outram
Dorinda Outram is Clark Professor of History at the University of Rochester. She specializes in European history from 1648-1848, with particular emphasis on the Enlightenment and the French Revolution, history of the body, history of science and...
Mona Siddiqui
Mona Siddiqui, OBE is Professor of Islamic and Inter-religious Studies and Assistant Principal for Religion and Society at the University of Edinburgh. She researches classical Islamic law, contemporary law and ethics, and Christian-Muslim...