Law School hosts second annual Notre Dame Religious Liberty Summit in Rome
The world’s leading defenders of religious freedom will gather in Rome July 20-22 for the second annual Notre Dame Religious Liberty Summit, hosted by the Law School’s Religious Liberty Initiative.
The summit’s theme is Dignitatis humanae — the Second Vatican Council’s declaration on religious freedom that spelled out the Catholic Church’s support for the protection of religious liberty and set the ground rules for how the Church would relate to secular states.
The inaugural Notre Dame Religious Liberty Summit in 2021 was held on the University of Notre Dame’s campus. This year’s summit in Rome underscores the Religious Liberty Initiative’s global reach.
“Religious liberty is a fundamental human right, and the protection of religious liberty is a global issue,” said G. Marcus Cole, the Joseph A. Matson Dean and Professor of Law at Notre Dame Law School.
“Everyone around the world has the God-given right to live their lives as their beliefs require — proudly and without fear,” Cole said. “The Religious Liberty Initiative at Notre Dame Law School has the potential to change the world by promoting and defending freedom of conscience for people and institutions around the world.”
Established by Cole in 2020, the Notre Dame Law School Religious Liberty Initiative promotes and defends religious freedom for people of all faiths through scholarship, events and the Law School’s Religious Liberty Clinic. The initiative protects the freedom of individuals to hold religious beliefs as well as their right to exercise and express those beliefs and to live according to them.
The Religious Liberty Initiative has represented individuals and organizations from an array of faith traditions to defend the right to religious worship, to preserve sacred lands from destruction, to promote the freedom to select religious ministers and to prevent discrimination against religious schools and families.
The summit will stimulate conversations among scholars, advocates and religious leaders about the future of religious liberty in the United States and around the world.
Although in-person attendance at the summit is by invitation only, the schedule will include several panel discussions and speeches that will be recorded and available for the public to view on Notre Dame Law School’s YouTube channel.
The 2022 Notre Dame Prize for Religious Liberty will be presented to Mary Ann Glendon, the Learned Hand Professor of Law, emerita, at Harvard Law School and former U.S. ambassador to the Holy See. Glendon is being honored for groundbreaking legal scholarship as well as her distinguished service to the United States and the Catholic Church — all of which have had a global impact by affirming religious freedom as a fundamental human right.
Steven Smith, professor of law and co-executive director of the Institute for Law and Religion at the University of San Diego School of Law, will receive the Religious Liberty Initiative’s 2022 Award for Scholarship.
Another highlight of the summit will be the keynote discussion on July 22 between two of the world’s foremost philosophers and public intellectuals — Cornel West of Union Theological Seminary and Robert P. George of Princeton University.
The events will be recorded at the Religious Liberty Summit and posted on the Law School’s YouTube channel for the public to view.
Learn more about Notre Dame Law School’s Religious Liberty Initiative at law.nd.edu/RLI.
Originally published by at law.nd.edu on July 11.
Latest Colleges & Schools
- Faculty receive prestigious early career awards from National Science FoundationDuring the 2024-25 academic year, four researchers in the University of Notre Dame’s Colleges of Engineering and Science received early-career awards from the National Science Foundation.
- ‘Prebunking’ false election claims may boost trust in electionsIn recent years, democracies worldwide have seen a growing erosion of trust in election outcomes and institutions, driven in part by fears of widespread fraud. New Notre Dame research finds that “prebunking” — providing accurate information before false claims spread — boosts trust in elections more effectively than traditional fact-checking.
- Justice Amy Coney Barrett to deliver Center for Citizenship and Constitutional Government lectureAmy Coney Barrett, associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, will speak at the University of Notre Dame at 4 p.m. Sept. 12 in the Leighton Concert Hall of the DeBartolo Performing Arts Center.
- Three Notre Dame researchers win NEH grants for humanities-based projectsDavid Hernandez, the Eli J. and Helen Shaheen Associate Professor of Classics, and Morgan Munsen, senior research and partnerships program manager at the Nanovic Institute for European Studies in the Keough School of Global Affairs, have each won an NEH Collaborative Research grant. Thomas A. Stapleford, associate professor in the Program of Liberal Studies, is leading a team that has been awarded a Humanities Research Center on Artificial Intelligence grant.
- Open-access database offers insights into U.S. congressional candidatesEach election cycle, thousands of candidates vie for seats in the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate. Until now, there has been no comprehensive, publicly available resource cataloging what those candidates say about who they are or what they stand for. A new open-access database called CampaignView, created by researchers at the University of Notre Dame, offers researchers, journalists and educators a powerful tool to understand congressional elections.
- First impressions count: How babies are talked about during ultrasounds impacts parent perceptions, caregiving relationshipPsychologist Kaylin Hill studied the impact of a parent’s first impression of their baby during an ultrasound exam. The words used by the medical professional to describe the baby (positive or negative) influence how the parents perceive their baby, relate to them after they're born and even how that child behaves as a toddler. The research has broad implications for how we train medical professionals to interact with expectant parents, as well as how we care for parents during the perinatal period when they are most susceptible to depression.
