SEMINAR SERIES
Washington, D.C.
On the Forbidden While Inescapable Law-Morality Relation
The broad question to be taken up in the seminar series is whether the law’s responsibility to deliver justice to the community can be fulfilled apart from the law’s historic role in the Western tradition: namely, to serve and sustain the polity’s moral ecology and the common good. For decades, the historic and formerly uncontroversial understanding of law as concerned with the moral condition of the community has faced a devoted resistance from the institutionally entrenched political philosophy of late-modern liberalism which instead views the law’s role as a (mostly) morally agnostic coordinator of persons’ preference-satisfaction. The now-in-fashion redefinitions of freedom, male/female, marriage, family, and human purpose—and the social enactment of those redefinitions—illustrate this contrary vision and its effects. Legal norms have not been eliminated but replaced in an inverted mode.
The seminar series, led by a faculty of subject-matter experts presenting lectures and leading discussions, will consider the debate over the law’s proper role and calling by considering certain subjects of the law’s perennial attention: life and death, marriage and family, religion and secularism, speech and censorship, technology and science, freedom and authority, among others.
The series initiates in January with a gathering in DC for an evening reception, welcome meal, and lectures introducing the themes to be pursued in the seminar series. We will rejoin in March when our inquiries will proceed during a two-day retreat outside of Washington D.C. In the months following the retreat, we will conduct three additional afternoon-evening lecture and dinner gatherings near Capitol Hill. Each will include opportunities for fellowship among participants in a context of conviviality.
Seminar series positions are available for up to 20 participants. Welcome applicants include Hill staffers, local graduate students, and law and policy organization personnel.
Costs associated with each of the seminar series events will be covered by the Hale Institute, including meals, travel from D.C. to the retreat center and back again, and room and board while at the retreat. Any other travel to and from Washington D.C., and around the city, will be the responsibility of each participant.
Application
Prospective participants should submit applications via email by November 30, to seminar@haleinstitute.org. Please include in your email submission the following:
1. Full name, mailing address, telephone number, and preferred email address.
2. PDF of CV or resume.
3. A photo of yourself.
4. A letter you compose, describing your intellectual interest in the topics and fields of consideration to be treated in the seminar series.
5. An academic or professional reference, and that person’s position, email address, and telephone number.
Questions on the foregoing may be sent to seminar@haleinstitute.org.
