Month: March 2023

neilfoster

Law & Religion Junior Faculty Conference- UND, Chicago, Oct 2023

Academics who are working in the Law & Religion area may be interested in this upcoming conference at the University of Notre Dame in Chicago, especially those who are in the first decade of their academic career. I am informed that offers of papers will be considered even from those based outside the US. Here are the details:

Notre Dame Law School in Chicago
Notre Dame Law School in Chicago

The University of Notre Dame Law School’s Religious Liberty Initiative invites junior faculty to submit abstracts of works in progress to be considered for presentation at a Law & Religion Junior Faculty Conferenceto be held at Notre Dame Law School’s Chicago Campus October 27-28, 2023.

We are looking for submissions of proposed articles that will make significant contributions in the field of law and religion. If your paper is selected, you will receive a $1,500 honorarium + travel costs, and dedicated commentary on your paper from a distinguished scholar in this field. You also commit that you will have a working draft circulated at least one month before the Conference. For more information and to submit a 500-word abstract of your proposed article by April 28th, 2023, visit our website. If you already have a working draft of your article, you may also submit that with your abstract for consideration during the selection process. 

Qualifications: Submissions are limited to unpublished papers by junior faculty, meaning tenure-track law faculty who have been teaching for no more than 10 years. Aspiring scholars who have not yet obtained their first tenure-track appointments, including teaching or other fellows and visiting assistant professors, are also welcome to submit papers for consideration.

  • Submissions may not have been accepted for publication by a journal, and the article must remain substantively revisable (for purposes of incorporating changes resulting from conference feedback).
  • There is a limit of one submission per person.
  • Co-authored pieces will be accepted only if both authors are junior faculty members. Any honorarium awarded on the basis of a co-authored piece must be shared.

Selection: Submissions will be competitively selected by a jury of distinguished scholars in the field of law and religion. 

Reach out to Stephanie Barclay at stephanie.barclay@nd.edu with any additional questions.

neilfoster

A Human Rights Charter for Australia? A Guest Blog Post.

Recently the Australian Human Rights Commission has issued a Position Paper entitled A Human Rights Act for Australia . I have often commented here on the gaps in protection for religious freedom under Australian federal law, and one suggestion that has sometimes been made is that Australia should implement internationally recognised rights such as those contained in art 18 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. But is doing this by way of a federal Human Rights Charter the right way to go?

I asked one of Australia’s leading commentators on international human rights issues, Dr Paul Taylor, to offer some preliminary comments on the proposals that have been put forward. Dr Taylor is an Honorary Senior Lecturer in the T.C. Beirne School of Law, a Fellow of the Centre for Public, International and Comparative Law, and an Adjunct Professor at the School of Law, The University of Notre Dame Australia. His principal academic interests are international human rights law and conflict of laws (private international law). He has held Visiting Fellowships at Wolfson College, Cambridge and at the Centre for International and Public Law, College of Law, Australian National University. He is the author of A Commentary on the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights: The UN Human Rights’ Committee’s Monitoring of ICCPR Rights (Cambridge University Press, 2020); and Freedom of Religion: UN and European Human Rights Law and Practice (Cambridge University Press, 2005).

Dr Taylor has provided the following comments as a guest blogger. The comments are of course written in a personal capacity, and do not reflect any views of any institution to which he is or has been affiliated.

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neilfoster

Zombie Jesus? City Legal Newcastle, April 5

Easter is coming, when Christians celebrate what seems like an amazing claim: that Jesus Christ rose from the dead! Is this just a first century Zombie story, or is it grounded in historical events? The Newcastle Christian Lawyers Fellowship, in partnership with “City Legal”, invite those who want to consider this claim to come to a breakfast meeting on Wednesday April 5, 7:30-8:30 am, at NuSpace (the city campus of Newcastle Uni, corner of Hunter St and Auckland St), room x-703.

Does it really matter whether Jesus rose from the dead? And just how much weight can be placed on the evidentiary material in the New Testament? Join us at our second-ever Newcastle City Legal as David Robertson returns to answer these (and other!) questions.

More information here, and registration is open now! Charge is $5 (and free coffee), or $10 for pastries with coffee. Everyone is welcome to come: lawyers, law students, or those just interested in the questions!