Religious Legal Theory: State of the Field

Seton Hall University Law School will host this conference on November 12-13, 2009. The tentative title for my paper is Grounding Human Rights: Reflections of the Divine. My even more tentative abstract:

Post-World War II development in human rights law has seen several iterations. Consensus on new human rights has become increasingly difficult and implementation of successive generations of human rights has proved increasingly challenging. I argue that these progressively more intractable challenges result from the failure to grapple openly with the question of the very grounding of human rights. Harmony on a single account for human rights is not possible in this pluralistic world but candid discussion of the competing presuppositions may prove helpful. I will present such one such account in terms of the Christian doctrine of the image of God and will elaborate on its implications for identifying (and limiting) human rights.

Comments are welcome.