Association of American Law Schools
2001 Annual Meeting
Wednesday, January 3, 2001 - Saturday, January 6, 2001
San Francisco, California
Saturday, January 6, 2001
8:30–10:15 a.m.

Continental Ballroom 6
Hilton San Francisco and Towers
Ballroom Level


Section on Law and Religion
Frederick Mark Gedicks, Brigham Young University, Chair
Emily Fowler Hartigan, St. Mary's University, Program Co-Chair
Mark C. Modak-Truran, Mississippi College, Program Co-Chair

Sovereign Knowledge: On What Do We Base Legal Knowledge if God and Reason Are Dead as Universal Epistemologies?

Moderator:

Emily Fowler Hartigan, St. Mary's University

Speakers:
Azizah Y. Al-Hibri, The University of Richmond
Mark C. Modak-Truran, Mississippi College
Wendy Brown Scott, Tulane University
Reynaldo Valencia, St. Mary's University
The Honorable Robert Yazzie, Chief Justice of the Navajo Supreme Court, Window Rock, Arizona


The "rule of law" was often another way of saying the "rule of reason." By contrast, religion was frequently deemed to be a non-rational source of insight and banished into the corner of the subjective emotions. God was dead as a source of reflection, adjudication or legislation. Then existentialism and postmodernism, along with critical stances including Critical Legal Studies and deconstruction, revealed the indeterminacy of "reason" and declared rationalism bankrupt as a reliable source of knowing. In the post-religious, post-rationalist era, how are we to make or interpret law? What kind of epistemic base is legitimate or sovereign in the multi-epistemic polity, in the law courts, in the academy?

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