2009 CONSTITUTIONAL LAW CENTER SYMPOSIUM

“Global Perspectives on Religion, the State, and Constitutionalism”
April 4, 2009
Drake Law School

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Presenters

Dr. Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na'im, Charles Howard Candler Professor of Law at Emory University

Speech Title: Religion, the State and Constitutionalism in Islamic Comparative Perspectives

He is the author of Islam and the Secular State: Negotiating the Future of Shari`a (Indonesian 2007, English 2008); African Constitutionalism and the Role of Islam (2006); and Toward an Islamic Reformation: Civil liberties, Human Rights and International Law (1990). His edited books include Islamic Family Law in a Changing World: A Global Resource Book (2002); Cultural Transformation and Human Rights in Africa (2002); Human Rights under African Constitutions (2003); Human Rights in Cross-Cultural Perspectives: Quest for consensus (1992). Many of his articles and book chapters can be downloaded from his home page: www.law.emory.edu/aannaim 

Thomas F. Farr, Visiting Associate Professor of Religion and International Affairs at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University

Speech Title: International Religious Freedom and American National Security in the 21st Century

Thomas F. Farr is Visiting Associate Professor of Religion and International Affairs at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University. He is also a senior fellow at the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace and World Affairs where he directs the Religion and Foreign Policy Program. Dr. Farr is a former U.S. diplomat and was the State Department’s first Director of the Office of International Religious Freedom. After a career of 21 years in the Foreign Service he left to write on religious freedom and U.S. national interests. He has published articles in Foreign Affairs, First Things, The Review of Faith and International Affairs, Mediterranean Quarterly, and the proceedings of the Fellowship of Catholic Scholars. He has contributed essays to several books on religion and American foreign policy, and three additional essays will appear in 2009. Farr’s own first book, World of Faith and Freedom: Why International Religious Liberty is Vital to American National Security, was published by Oxford University Press in 2008.

A Ph.D. in history from the University of North Carolina, Dr. Farr served in the U.S. Army and has taught at both the U.S. Military Academy and the U.S. Air Force Academy. His early diplomatic career focused on strategic nuclear weapons policy, the Cold War and European politics, and his positions included Deputy Director for Strategic Arms Control Policy, State Department advisor to U.S.-Soviet arms control talks in Geneva, and senior intelligence analyst for NATO, Greece and Cyprus.

Dr. Farr is vice chair of the board of directors for Human Dignity International, a Christian NGO that advocates religious freedom for all people. He a contributing editor for the Review of Faith and International Affairs, and serves on the Expert Committee for the Institute on Religion and Public Policy and on the Advisory Committee of the Center for Democracy and Human Rights in Saudi Arabia. He was the recipient of the 2003 Jan Karski Wellspring of Freedom Award, presented by the Institute on Religion and Public Policy for contributions to international religious freedom.

Professor Rick Garnett, Professor of Law at the University of Notre Dame

Speech Title: Church Autonomy, the First Amendment, and Constitutionalism

Richard W. Garnett is Professor of Law at the University of Notre Dame, where he teaches and writes about constitutional law, religious liberty, and church-state relations. He received his B.A. in philosophy summa cum laude from Duke University in 1990, and his J.D. from Yale Law School in 1995. At Yale, he served as senior editor of the Yale Law Journal and as editor of the Yale Journal of Law & the Humanities. Professor Garnett also spent a year in the Jesuit Volunteer Corps, working on juvenile justice and prison reform issues in San Francisco, California.

Before coming to Notre Dame, he served as law clerk to Chief Justice Rehnquist during October Term 1996 and to then-Chief Judge Richard S. Arnold of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit. He practiced law at the Washington, D.C. law firm of Miller, Cassidy, Larroca & Lewin, specializing in criminal defense, religious freedom, and education reform matters. He lives in South Bend, Indiana, with his wife, Professor Nicole Stelle Garnett, and three children, Margaret, Thomas, and Elizabeth.

Dr. T. Jeremy Gunn, Director of the ACLU’s Program on Freedom of Religion and Belief and the Senior Fellow for Religion and Human Rights at the Center for the Study of Law and Religion at Emory University School of Law

Speech Title: Secularism and Religious Freedom in France

He is a member of the Advisory Council on Freedom of Religion and Belief of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). He received his Ph.D. in the Study of Religion from Harvard University, a J.D., magna cum laude, from Boston University, and an A.M. in Humanities from the University of Chicago. He was an attorney at the law firm Covington & Burling, after which he held several positions in the U.S. government, including at the U.S. Department of State (Office of International Religious Freedom) and as the Executive Director and General Counsel of a federal agency of the U.S. government that declassified records related to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. He was a Senior Fellow at the U.S. Institute of Peace in 1998-99. In 2008, he was a Visiting Professor at the law faculty of the Université de Paris II, and has previously taught at other universities in the United States, France, Germany, Tunisia, and Canada. His Harvard doctoral dissertation on the historical origins of the Establishment Clause of the Constitution was published as A Standard for Repair: The Establishment Clause, Equality, and Natural Rights (New York: Garland Press, 1992). Among his other publications are: “Religious Liberty (Modern Period),” in the Encyclopedia of Christianity vol. 4 (2005):605-617; “Religious Freedom and Laïcité: A Comparison of the United States and France,” Brigham Young University Law Review (Summer 2004):419-501; La nouvelle question religieuse: Régulation ou ingérence de l’État? (The New Religious Question : State Regulation or State Interference?) (ed. With Pauline Côté) (Brussels: Peter Lang, 2006); Din Özgürlüğü ve Laicite Abd ve Fransa Mukayesesi (Ankara, Turkey: Liberal Dusunce, 2006); Dieu en France et aux États-Unis: Quand les mythes font la loi (with Blandine Chélini-Pont) (Paris: Berg International, 2005). His book Spiritual Weapons: The Cold War and the Forging of an American National Religion was published by Praeger in January 2009.

Professor Laura Jenkins (PhD Political Science, University of Wisconsin-Madison), Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Cincinnati

Speech Title: Diversity and the Constitution in India: What is Religious Freedom?

Her publications focus on social justice and identity politics in South Asia, notably her book on affirmative action, Identity and Identification in India: Defining the Disadvantaged (Routledge Curzon 2003). Her articles on religion, caste, gender and politics have appeared in journals including Law and Contemporary Problems, Connecticut Law Review, Journal of Asian Studies, and Commonwealth and Comparative Politics. She has authored book chapters on the empowerment of low castes via religious conversion, the role of religious civil law, and comparative affirmative action.

Jenkins was a Fulbright New Century Scholar (2007-8), carrying out research in India and South Africa on access and equity in higher education and, previously, a Dartmouth Humanities Institute Fellow for research on religion and politics in India. She will be a Taft Center Fellow at the Charles Phelps Taft Research Center at the University of Cincinnati during the 2009-10 academic year.

Her research enriches her graduate and undergraduate courses, including South Asian Politics, Nationalism and Identity Politics, Comparative Politics of Developing Countries, and Women and Politics in the Third World. She is author of “Shah Bano: Muslim women’s rights,” a case for Teaching Human Rights online [http://homepages.uc.edu/thro], which has been used in several classes in the US and Asia.

Professor Frank S. Ravitch, Michigan State University College of Law

Speech Title: Freedom of Religion Under the Israeli Constitution

Frank S. Ravitch is a Professor of Law at the Michigan State University College of Law. He is the author of the books, MARKETING CREATION: THE LAW AND INTELLIGENT DESIGN (Cambridge Univ. Press, expected 2010); Masters OF ILLUSION: THE SUPREME COURT AND THE RELIGION CLAUSES (NYU Press 2007); LAW AND RELIGION, A READER: CASES, CONCEPTS, AND THEORY, 2ND ED. (West 2008) (First Ed. 2004); EMPLOYMENT DISCRIMINATION LAW (Prentice Hall 2005) (with Pamela Sumners and Janis McDonald); and SCHOOL PRAYER AND DISCRIMINATION: THE CIVIL RIGHTS OF RELIGIOUS MINORITIES AND DISSENTERS (Northeastern University Press, 1999 & paperback edition 2001). Professor Ravitch is currently working on a treatise with the late Boris Bittker and Scott Idelman called RELIGION AND THE STATE IN AMERICAN LAW, which is supported by a grant from the Lilly Endowment. He has also published a number of law review articles dealing with law & religion, civil rights law, and disability discrimination in journals such as the Georgia Law Review, Wake Forest Law Review, BYU Law Review, Boston College Law Review, and Cardozo Law Review. In 2001, Professor Ravitch was named a Fulbright Scholar and served on the Faculty of Law at Doshisha University in Kyoto, Japan, where he taught U.S. Constitutional Law and Law & Religion and engaged in research.

Professor Ravitch recently wrote an amicus brief addressing constitutional issues to the United States Supreme Court on behalf of twenty railroad unions in Norfolk Southern Railroad, Inc. v. Sowell. He also wrote an amicus brief to the United States Supreme Court on behalf of the Interfaith Alliance and the Horace Mann League in support of the petition for writ of certiorari in Chandler v. Siegelman, a school prayer case from Alabama. He regularly serves as an expert for print and broadcast media and speaks on topics related to church/state and civil rights law to a wide range of national and local organizations.