The Program in Law and Public Affairs at Princeton University will celebrate its 10th anniversary with a major public conference titled "Law@Princeton." Beginning with a keynote address by Provost Christopher Eisgruber on at 4:30 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 21 in McCormick Hall, Room 101, the conference will continue all day Friday and much of Saturday, Oct. 22 and 23, in Robertson Hall. It will include 12 panel discussions featuring more than 50 distinguished scholars from around the world who have been fellows at LAPA since its founding.
Media who wish to attend must contact Judi Rivkin by Oct. 19 to register.
Eisgruber's keynote address is titled "Studying Law at Princeton." His talk examines the distinctive responsibilities of legal scholarship in a polarized age, where abortion and affirmative action have dominated the Supreme Court's docket for more than three decades, and the justices now line up in ideological lockstep with the platforms of the political parties that appointed them.
"Law@Princeton" conference sessions continue at 9 a.m. Friday and will feature two concurrent 90-minute sessions in each time slot, beginning at 9 a.m., 11 a.m., 2 p.m. and 4 p.m. Saturday's sessions open at 9:15 a.m. and will close following the 11 a.m. discussions.
Session topics include:
• Constitutional Values: Religion and Conflicting Sources of Moral Claims
• Shariah and Secularism
• Thinking Through Intellectual Property
• Competing Regulatory Systems
• Legal Recognition and Conceptions of Legal Personhood
• Discriminations
• States in a World of International Law
• International Law in a World of States
• Terrorism and Human Rights
• The History of Constitutional Government
• Comparative Constitutionalism
• The Legal Constitution of Europe
This event is presented by the Princeton University's Program in Law and Public Affairs; all sessions are free and open to the public. McCormick Hall is on the central campus, and is home to the Princeton University Art Museum. Robertson Hall is located at the corner of Washington Road and Prospect Avenue; conference sessions will be on the ground floor.
Christopher Eisgruber became the provost of Princeton University in July 2004. He is the Laurance S. Rockefeller Professor of Public Affairs in the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs and the University Center for Human Values. From 2001 through June 2004, he served as director of Princeton's Program in Law and Public Affairs. He is the author of "The Next Justice: Repairing the Supreme Court Appointments Process" (Princeton, 2007), "Religious Freedom and the Constitution" (Harvard, 2007) (co-authored with Lawrence G. Sager) and "Constitutional Self-Government" (Harvard, 2001), as well as numerous articles in books and academic journals.
Princeton University's Program in Law and Public Affairs explores the role of law in constituting politics, society, the economy and culture. LAPA participants are engaged in the study of law both in the present and over time, not only in the U.S., but also in countries around the world and across national borders. Each year, LAPA welcomes a select group of residential fellows and occasional visitors drawn from the academy, legal practice, government and policymaking institutions. They join a collection of professors on Princeton's permanent faculty who draw upon diverse methodologies to investigate legal phenomena. By combining the multidisciplinary expertise of Princeton's faculty with knowledge and perspectives provided by leading academic and practical experts on the law, the Program in Law and Public Affairs has created an exciting new forum for teaching and research about the legal technologies and institutions needed to address the complex problems of the 21st century.
From its beginnings as a Woodrow Wilson School program to serve as an intellectual home to public policy students pursuing law degrees at American law schools and to provide one-year fellowships to distinguished legal scholars who would enrich the legal academic offerings and discourse on campus, LAPA has grown into a center for Princeton's multidisciplinary legal inquiry and scholarship. LAPA has collaborated with a wide range of programs on campus, from anthropology and sociology to comparative literature and history as well as from the Woodrow Wilson School and politics to computer science and engineering. Partnerships have extended to other institutions, and LAPA has held joint conferences with New York University School of Law, the University of Pennsylvania Law School, Columbia Law School, the University of Toronto Faculty of Law and the Rutgers University Center for Race and Ethnicity. Both edited volumes and special issues of journals have come out of LAPA's conferences. Public lectures and programs exploring legal dimensions of current issues on the public policy agenda continue to draw foremost legal scholars.
From its inception, LAPA-sponsored inquiries have contributed to legal research and jurisprudence, beginning with the publication of the oft-cited "Princeton Principles on Universal Jurisdiction" in 2001, and continuing with the collaboration of scholars, military personnel, practitioners and contractors which resulted in "Consensus Findings on Legal Framework Governing Military Contractors" and subsequent legislation. LAPA's two named lectures, the John Marshall Harlan '20 Lecture in Constitutional Adjudication, and the Donald S. Bernstein '75 Lecture, have attracted distinguished jurists from the high courts of the United States, Germany, Israel and New Jersey, as well as renowned scholars and advocates. LAPA has prospered under the leadership of five directors or acting directors: Stephen Macedo, founding director; Christopher Eisgruber '83, the first permanent director who was named University provost after three years; Kim Lane Scheppele, beginning her second five-year term as director; and acting directors Stanley Katz of the Woodrow Wilson School and Paul Frymer of the Department of Politics.
For more information, please visit the LAPA website.
