Ave Maria School of Law co-organized an international academic conference on “Christianity and the Law” held at Cordoba University Law School in Spain, on October 26-28, 2023. Conference co-sponsors included the University of Navarre (UNAV) (Spain), Collegium Intermarium (Poland), and the Institute Solidarity and Human Rights Institute (U.S.A.).

Dean John Czarnetzky, Professor Brian Scarnecchia, and Professor Ligia Castaldi participated in panels dealing with the topic of Christianity and legal education, which involved discussion of the academic endeavor to re-Christianize Western legal culture through law teaching. Dean Czarnetzky spoke on the panel titled “Teaching Jurisprudence under the light of the Natural Law Tradition”; Professor Scarnecchia spoke in the panel on “Teaching Constitutional and Human Rights Law under the light of the Natural Law Tradition.” Professor Ligia Castaldi moderated the panels along with Pilar Zambrano, Legal Philosophy Professor from the University of Navarre, and Gabriel Maino, Legal Philosophy Professor at the Pontifical Catholic University of Argentina.

Panelists invited by Ave Law included Christopher Tollefsen, Professor of Law at University of South Carolina; Lee Strang, Professor of Law at University of Toledo; Philippe Pichot-Bravard, Professor at Université de Brest; Christiaan Alting von Geusau, Rector Emeritus and Professor of Law and Education, ITI Catholic University of Austria; Bartosz Lewandowski, Rector of Collegium Intermarium, and Aleksander Stepkowski, Poland Supreme Court Judge and Professor at the University of Warsaw.

Professors on both panels exchanged views and shared their experiences on integrating natural law legal philosophy into their institutional curriculum, substantive contents by subject matter, individual teaching techniques, and scholarship. The gathering marked the beginning of an intellectual exchange between representatives of the Latin, European, and Anglo-Saxon natural law traditions.

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