Pepperdine School of Law Hosts 2017 Nootbaar Conference
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The School of Law hosted the 2017 Nootbaar Conference on March 9 and 10 focusing on the theme “Religious Critiques of Law.”
Speakers from a variety of religious traditions addressed the law based on their backgrounds, supporting and challenging the notion that religious critiques of law, such as those explored by legal ethics scholar and author Thomas L. Shaffer in his book American Lawyers and Their Communities: Ethics in the Legal Profession, are of value.
Shaffer encourages attorneys to examine the law from a religious perspective and contends that law schools train attorneys to analyze religion-based issues from a legal standpoint while ignoring the possibility that religious congregations may possess their own impressions of the justice system.
Throughout the two-day event, speakers discussed the history of religious influence on law and assessed what religion might say to subjects that do not ordinarily encounter religious critique, such as property and contracts.