Tell your friends who may be interested in participating in this! -- Tom B.
+++++
CALL FOR PAPERS: “Intellectual Property and Religious Thought”
University of St. Thomas School of Law, April 5, 2013
The University of St. Thomas will hold a conference titled “Intellectual Property and Religious Thought,” on April 5, 2013, co-sponsored by the Terrence J. Murphy Institute for Catholic Thought, Law, and Public Policy and The University of St. Thomas Law Journal. The conference will be held at the University of St. Thomas School of Law building in downtown Minneapolis.
The conference will bring together legal scholars, religious ethicists, religion scholars, and theologians for an interdisciplinary discussion of how religious themes, practices, and communities may inform and shape intellectual property law and policy. The time is ripe for such a conversation. The long, rich tradition of religious thought concerning property rights and obligations has only begun to be applied to the problems concerning intellectual property (IP) that are so central to the Information Age. The foundations for analyzing these issues are deeply contested culturally, as evidenced by the warring slogans “Copying is theft” and “Intellectual property is theft.” The Catholic Church and other religious bodies have issued brief but non-systematic statements on certain issues, such as biotechnology patents and access to patented medicines or seeds. Underlying cases such as Bowman v. Monsanto, now before the U.S. Supreme Court, are deep debates about social justice and the ownership of artificially created but naturally replicating things (in that case, patents on seeds)—both matters to which major religions have historically spoken. The conference and papers from it published in the University of St. Thomas Law Journal will be catalysts for this interdisciplinary conversation.
Keynote/featured speakers confirmed for the conference include (further invitations pending):
- Roberta Rosenthal Kwall, Raymond P. Niro Professor of Intellectual Property Law, DePaul University College of Law
- Paul Griffiths, Warren Professor of Catholic Theology, Duke University Divinity School
- Kevin Outterson, Associate Professor of Health Law, Bioethics, and Human Rights, Boston University School of Law
- Audrey Chapman, Joseph M. Healy, Jr. Chair in Medical Humanities and Bioethics, University of Connecticut School of Medicine
Two broad themes provide the framework for conference papers: the idea of creativity as gift, and the idea of stewardship of property as fundamental to ownership. These are meant to be highly flexible and allow for a wide range of topics, including but not limited to:
- Creativity as a gift: its implication for particular areas in copyright, patent, or other IP laws
- Limits on patentability, of living things or natural processes, in the light of religious frameworks
- Particular moral obligations of IP rights-holders, under stewardship or other religious themes
- IP and human development in religious perspectives, under frameworks such as “the preferential option for the poor” or others
- Analyses of particular creative/innovation industries or practices under religious norms and frameworks
- The role of religious norms or communities in (a) encouraging compliance with IP rights or (b) challenging IP rights
- Religious communities’ treatment of their own IP-eligible material
Depending upon the number of accepted papers, they may be presented in plenary or concurrent sessions. Accepted papers will be considered for publication in the University of St. Thomas Law Journal.
Abstracts of proposed papers should be one page and should include the author’s name, affiliation, mailing address, and e-mail address. The deadline for submission of proposals is December 3, 2012. Notification of acceptance will be made by December 13, 2012. Abstracts should be sent by e-mail to tcberg[at]stthomas.edu or by first-class mail to
Professor Thomas Berg, c/o Terrence J. Murphy Institute for Catholic Thought, Law, and Public Policy; University of St. Thomas, MSL 400, 1000 La Salle Avenue, Minneapolis, MN 55403-2015
The call for papers is on the web here.
I posted the following comment on my Facebook page. It's generated an interesting discussion among my friends, including my wonderful former student, and Notre Dame Law School grad, Michael Fragoso (who does not quite see eye to eye with me on this one).
Conservative Friends: I know that both sides in politics take people's remarks out of context whenever doing so provides a way of making opponents look bad. Liberals do it to conservatives; conservatives do it to liberals. Democrats do it to Republicans and Republicans do it to Democrats. Republicans do it to Republicans, and Democrats do it to Democrats, in primary elections. But that doesn't make it right. The public good is not served by it, and often it is disserved. At the risk of coming off as prissy and perhaps something of a scold to boot, may I respectfully request that we not seize upon President Obama's remark about losing four men in Libya being "not optimal"? In context, the remark was not disrespectful, callous, or otherwise untoward. Honestly, it is not fair to use it to depict the President as making light of the killing of our Ambassador and those who were murdered with him. My Facebook friends know I have been very tough on the President for his handling of the Libyan affair (and for many other things). I am working hard, as I know many of you are, to defeat him. I have been extremely critical of what I believe was a grotesque lie told by the President in the most recent debate, suggesting that from the start he had identified the Libyan attack as a premeditated act by terrorists, and not merely a spontaneous attack by a mob that had been enflamed by an offensive anti-Islamic film. I believe he will pay a heavy political price for that lie. And he should. But let's criticize the President, and our political opponents generally, for what they deserve criticism for. Let's not criticize them unfairly. Let's be citizens, not partisans.
Last weekend, I participated (along with MOJ-ers Rob Vischer, Patrick Brennan, and Tom Berg!) in what was, I think, the most rewarding academic conference I've experienced: "The Freedom of the Church in the Modern Era." Thanks and congrats to Larry Alexander and Steve Smith, of the University of San Diego, and their new Institute for Law and Religion, for organizing and hosting. Here's the conference blurb:
The Western commitment to freedom of religion, reflected in the United States Constitution and in a variety of international human rights documents, arguably descends from the medieval campaign for libertas ecclesiae—“freedom of the church.” In modern times, though, it seems that the progeny (freedom of religion) has largely displaced—and forgotten—the parent (freedom of the church). Jurists and scholars debate whether there is any constitutional commitment to freedom of the church, or church autonomy, or institutional free exercise. And they often suppose that such commitment, if there is one, must be derivative from a more fundamental commitment to freedom of religion.
The issue of freedom of the church has become urgent in recent years. Claimants sue churches in secular courts for what they perceive as abuse or discrimination. Government agencies act to compel religiously-affiliated institutions to provide goods or services such as contraceptives or abortion. In 2011 the Supreme Court considered for the first time a case raising the issue of the so-called “ministerial exemption” for churches from some federal regulatory laws. Opposing the position taken by numerous lower courts, the Obama Administration argued in that case that the Supreme Court should reject the exemption.
This conference will accordingly consider issues related to freedom of the church . . .
Micah Schwartzman and Rich Schragger presented their paper, "Against Religious Institutionalism" (discussed earlier here on Prawfs); Steve and Paul added to the body of important work they've done on the institutional dimension of religious freedom and the First Amendment more generally; I tried to update and expand my defense of "the freedom of the church" as a still important (i.e., not anachronistic) idea; Patrick Brennan challenged participants to take more seriously the Church's truth-claims about what she really is; Tom Berg urged "progressives" to better appreciate the importance of religious freedom and conscience-rights; Rob Vischer explored the possibility of free-exercise rights for commercial entities and in the commercial sphere; and a number of us did an interpretive dance-reenactment of the Canossa meeting between Pope Gregory VII and Emperor Henry IV. Lots of other interesting papers were presented, and they should be out this Spring in the San Diego Law Review. Stay tuned!
Some worth-reading posts by
George Weigel (First Things),
David Cloutier (Catholic Moral Theology),
Anna Williams (First Things), and
Naomi Schaefer Riley (Philanthropy Roundtable) about the content (and possibility) of what Williams calls a "Truly Catholic Economy." More conversations like this, please.
