Department of Philosophy Fall 2009 Speaker Series

November 16, 2009 4:00 PM - 5:00 PM
St. John Hall 204

Reading Group Discussion On
“Religiously Based Judgments and Religious Discourse in Political Life”

with
Kent Greenawalt
Professor of Law
Columbia University

Monday, November 16 2009
4:00 p.m. -5:00 p.m.
Room: St. John Hall 204

Please join us for a reading group discussion of a chapter from Kent Greenawalt’s recent book, Religion and the Constitution: Establishment and Fairness*.  Participants are invited to read Chapter 23, entitled “Religiously Based Judgments and Religious Discourse in Political Life,” in preparation for our discussion with Professor Greenawalt. Participants are welcome to also read Chapter 24, entitled “Legal Enforcement of Religion-Based Morality,” though the focus of the discussion will be on Chapter 23.  Copies of both chapters will be made available in the philosophy department. If you would like to have a copy sent to you through campus mail please email yatesm@stjohns.edu.

Kent Greenawalt is a professor of law at Columbia University School of Law and Editor-in-chief of Columbia Law Review. Before joining the Columbia faculty in 1965, he was a law clerk to the U.S. Supreme Court Justice John M. Harlan and subsequently spent part of a summer as an attorney with the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights in Jackson, Mississippi. He was President of the American Society for Political and Legal Philosophy from 1991-93. His main interests are in constitutional law and jurisprudence, with special emphasis on church and state, freedom of speech, legal interpretation, and criminal responsibility. His publications include Conflicts of Law and Morality (1987); Religious Convictions and Political Choice (1988); Private Consciences and Public Reasons (1995); Religion and the Constitution, Vol. 1, Free Exercise and Fairness (2006); Vol. 2, Establishment and Fairness (2008).

*Kent Greenawalt, Religion and the Constitution Vol. 2: Establishment and Fairness, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008): 497.