On 17 May 2011, over 90 academics from the UK and across the globe attended the fourth Law and Religion Scholars Network (LARSN) Conference. LARSN was set up by Cardiff's Centre for Law and Religion in 2008 to bring together academics who were interested in how law and religion interact. The group currently has nearly 200 members.
Over 40 academic papers were presented at this year's conference, covering a wide range of subjects such as the future of the coronation oath, the charitable status of new religious movements and whether the Jedi Knights should be considered to be a religion. In addition to papers presented by academic and practising lawyers, a number of papers were presented by academics from non-legal disciplines, including a contribution that looked at developments in religious discrimination law from a religious studies standpoint and a paper that disseminated an AHRC/ESRC-funded research project on religious NGO activities. A number of papers were presented by academics from overseas, adding an international feel to the proceedings.
Three themed sessions were held. The first of these focused on ‘Clashing rights’ and was convened by Matthew Gibson of Liverpool University. The papers presented in this session explored how freedom of religion has collided with other rights, looking at both international and domestic human rights law, discrimination law and approaches in other jurisdictions. The other two themed sessions considered ‘Legal pluralism’ and were convened by Amy Jackson of the University of Reading. The first examined subjective legal pluralism and focused on how legal subjects themselves develop understandings of what law is; the second examined institutional legal pluralism, looking at similar developments within legal systems.
The conference also included the fourth annual general meeting of LARSN, chaired by Dr Russell Sandberg, at which it was decided to hold a two-day LARSN conference at Cardiff Law School in 2012, which will mark the fifth anniversary of the Network. Professor Peter Edge of Oxford Brookes University also kindly offered to host a further conference for doctoral students in 2011, while the Centre for Law and Religion at Cardiff pledged to continue to support the now considerable online resources that LARSN operates,Footnote 2 including the Case Database, which is maintained by Frank Cranmer.
