Mark your calendars for Scarpa III

I am pleased to announce the complete line-up for this fall's third-annual Scarpa Conference on Law, Politics, and Culture, to be held at Villanova University on Friday, September 12, 2008.  We have attracted a diverse group of spectacularly qualified speakers to address both broad and narrow questions concerning free exercise of religion, establishment, equality, accomodation, conscience, "public reason," the freedom of the Church, and the Church in the United States.  Most of these issues are at the heart of Liberty of Conscience (Basic Books 2008) by Martha Nussbaum, who will deliver the conference's keynote address. Professor Nussbaum is the Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Ethics in the University of Chicago Law School; at Chicago, she is also appointed in Philosophy, Classics, Divinity, and Political Science.

Also speaking at the conference will be R. Kent Greenawalt, University Professor, Columbia University; Roderick M. Hills, Jr., William T. Comfort III Professor, New York University School of Law; Jesse Choper, Dean emeritus and Earl Warren Professor of Public Law, University of California at Berkeley, Boalt Hall; Steven Smith, Warren Distinguished Professor, University of San Diego School of Law; Very Reverend Richard Schenk, OP, Professor, Domincan School of Philosophy and Theology, Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley, CA; Geoffrey Stone, Dean emeritus and Harry Kalven, Jr., Distinguished Service Professor, University of Chicago Law School; and John T. McGreevy, Professor of History, University of Notre Dame.

Please mark your calendars and plan to attend. If you have any questions about the conference, please do not hesitate to get in touch with me.  The conference falls on the Friday before Villanova's Parents' Weekend, which means that hotel reservations should be made as early as possible.