This year’s program focuses on the intersection of law, culture and religion. Panelists will explore topics within this subject, including religious pluralism and cultural property.
Religious pluralism is often explored in terms of the variety of sects and faiths that exist in a given geographic area. This is often connected by courts and in the literature to the perceived interests that a given faith or sect may have regarding a constitutional right or political issue. While people may perceive religious pluralism as a monolithic concept of different faiths and sects, it often involves more nuanced patterns within faiths and sects. The panel will address how these dynamics affect the horizons of judges and others who grapple with religious pluralism.
The panel will also evaluate definitions of cultural property, using the dispute between the United States and the Sioux over the Black Hills as a vehicle for that exploration. Existing laws contain definitions of cultural property that are narrower than the theory of cultural property, and these narrow definitions are a result of the strong influence of Western European definitions of property. A new definition of cultural property, one that more fully comports with theory, will be proposed.
Business Meeting at Program Conclusion.