Fifteen years of the Annual Law and Religion Roundtable

Tempus fugit, and all that. I recently returned from Sabanville -- I mean, Tuscaloosa -- and the Annual Law and Religion Roundtable, which I've been organizing and hosting with Nelson Tebbe (Cornell) and our own Paul Horwitz for fifteen (!) years now.

We got the idea, if I recall correctly, from a workshop-style conference for younger property-law scholars that Ben Barros (now at Stetson) and Nestor Davidson (now at Fordham) put together out in Colorado. Each year -- well, we had to Zoom two of them, and miss one year altogether, because of COVID - we've held our version at a different school -- a "movable feast", as Paul likes to say! -- and exploited the on-site generosity of different colleagues.  Over the years, several hundred scholars -- from a variety of disciplines, at a range of career stages, with a variety of interests and perspectives -- have participated, and we've met from Stanford to Virginia to Toronto to Notre Dame (and a bunch of other places in between).

This tradition (!) has been -- for me, anyway! -- a highlight of the academic year. Notwithstanding disagreements about non-trivial questions, methodological differences, and a diversity of commitments and priors, the conversations have been productive and collegial, and the socializing and fellowship uplifting and encouraging. I've been particularly struck by (among other things) how strongly I've come to prefer the roudtable/workshop-type academic gathering to the panels-and-audience type (which is not to say I don't welcome your invitations to the latter!).

I know there are other, similar events that happen in other fields or around other themes ("The Schmooze", etc.), and I'd welcome hearing about others' experiences in the comments . . .