CUA Law Professor Mary Leary will be speaking at a panel regarding the source of human rights on October 20, 2017. The panel is part of "A Journal of Law and Religion: Violence, Social Justice, and Human Rights at the Intersection of Law and Religion" at the United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities. See below.

The Source of Human Rights

Anver Emon, University of Toronto Faculty of Law
Mary Leary, Columbus School of Law, Catholic University of America
Michael Perry, Emory University School of Law

A consensus resolution of these concrete issues rests upon a theory and definition of human rights, the source, grounding and justification of which has been vigorously debated. The conference will explore the question "What reason(s) do we have--if indeed we have any--to take seriously the morality of human rights?" It will also explore views, and critiques of those views, that there is a Islamic natural law tradition that can ground universal human rights and dignity in a religiously pluralistic world.