"Doing Justice Without Doing Harm" Conference at Pepperdine

I am enjoying the conversations (and the scenery, and the weather, . . . ) at Pepperdine University this weekend, thanks to the hospitality of Profs. Michael Helmand and Bob Cochran, and the University's Nootbaar Institute on Law, Religion, and Ethics.  Our own Amy Gelmen is about to take the podium, to talk about moral obligations of bystanders to those in danger.  

This morning, I moderated an interesting panel on Criminal Law matters, at which Prof. Barbara Armacost (to mention just one presenter) shared thoughtful remarks on the phenomenon of solitary confinement.  Before that, I had the honor of introducing the keynote lecture on "The Just Limits of Love" by Prof. Nicholas Wolterstorff.

Yesterday, there were two panels on the by-now familiar-to-law-folks debate about accommodations of religion and "third-party harms."  I spoke, along with Profs. Fred Gedicks, Nathan Chapman, Mark Scarberry, Chad Flanders, and Doug NeJaime.  A good time was had by all.  In my remarks, which were directed to the recent paper published by NeJaime and Prof. Reva Siegel, I contended -- drawing on this paper, from about ten years ago -- that the mere fact an accommodation claim involves an issue that is "culture-war" salient or in "democratic contestation" does not provide a (principled) basis for denying the claim.