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.

Metamorphosis

Pryor Posts India is now Pryor Thoughts. It's hard to believe that I left India six weeks ago but I certainly haven't forgotten India or Indian law. I've started writing a piece comparing impossibility under Section 56 of the Indian Contract Act with impracticability/frustration under American common law. I'm scheduled to present this at the SEALS conference in Florida in August so I need to keep plugging away. I'm also helping my wife with her India scrapbook so we've been re-living our 4+ months on the Subcontinent.

Professor Rajpurohit, one of my colleagues at NLU, will be giving a paper at Seton Hall University Law School in New Jersey in November on the theme of Religious Legal Theory. I'm also scheduled to present. I plan to refine my critique of Nicholas Wolterstorff's take on the nature of the image of God and human rights. See my Fulbright to India posts for more details.