"Prudential Judgment and Public Policy" Conference: Info and Registration

With registration materials available, I'm re-posting information on "Public Policy, Prudential Judgment, and Catholic Social Tradition," the annual conference of the Murphy Institute at St. Thomas (co-sponsors, Law and Catholic Studies), coming up in Minneapolis on April 7 and 8.  The list of 8 plenary speakers, including Chris Wolfe (Marquette Poli Sci), John McGreevy (Notre Dame History), and our own Rob Vischer, is here.  They'll be joined by 15-20 panelists in concurrent sessions.

Tom

"PUBLIC POLICY, PRUDENTIAL JUDGMENT, AND THE CATHOLIC SOCIAL TRADITION"

April 7-8, 2006, University of St. Thomas School of Law, Minneapolis, Minnesota

Registration Information There is no fee to attend the conference. However, participants must make their own travel and lodging arrangements.  Attendees must complete and submit registration form by Wednesday, March 29, 2006. General Conference Information In the Catholic moral tradition, prudence is understood to be a moral virtue that enables a person to reason well about things to be done. Prudence concerns reasoning both about goals to be pursued and means to be employed to accomplish them. The tradition acknowledges the importance of moral principles, which shape practical reasoning in very fundamental ways, but it also insists that concrete actions are also determined by prudential judgment, which wisely takes account of particular conditions. In recent years a number of public policy questions, such as the permissibility of the death penalty, the morality of the war in Iraq, and the justice of welfare reforms, have provoked controversy among Catholics. Advocates of very different policies have claimed that their positions follow from the Catholic social tradition and, at times, some have even insisted that their positions alone are faithful to this tradition. These controversies highlight enduring questions about the proper relationship between moral principles and prudential judgment. In much the same way, controversies have also accompanied some of the formal positions adopted by the American bishops and even the Vatican on questions of public policy. Here again there has been an indistinct line between direct inference from moral principles and sound prudential judgment, where the former invites commitment and the latter tolerates disagreement. Because of the importance of prudential judgment in public policy matters, the time is ripe for a careful and comprehensive discussion of the topic. The Murphy Institute's 2006 conference, held April 7-8 at the School of Law building in downtown Minneapolis, will investigate these questions with a roster of approximately 25 speakers in concurrent and plenary sessions.