Liveblogging the RALS Conference

I’m posting today from the biannual Conference of Religiously Affiliated Law Schools (RALS), hosted this year by Sam Levine at Touro. The first panel this morning, on which I participated, was titled “The Place of Law and Religion Institutes in the Law School and University.” The panel made clear how many such institutes exist in American law schools and how diverse are their interests. I spoke about our Center for Law and Religion here at St. John’s. Our center focuses on religion as a legal and sociological phenomenon and treats the subject from a broadly interfaith and comparative perspective. Elizabeth Schiltz, director of the Terrence J. Murphy Institute for Catholic Thought, Law and Public Policy at St. Thomas, described her center as having a slightly different focus, rooted more specifically in the Catholic intellectual and legal tradition. Elizabeth Clark, associate director of the International Center for Law and Religion Studies at BYU, described her center’s primary concern as promoting religious freedom around the world. Of course, there is a lot of overlap in the matters the centers cover. Yet the diversity of focus is a great sign that law and religion is a growth area in American law schools and that there is plenty of work to go around.