Second Summer Conference on Religion and the Rule of Law – Beijing, July 2011

For a second summer, a number of foreign scholars traveled to China to participate in an intensive course on comparative and international law and religion. The 2011 Summer Training Program on Religion and the Rule of Law, held in Beijing from 17-31 July, was sponsored by Peking University Law School’s Center for Constitutional and Administrative Law, together with the Pu Shi Institute for Social Sciences, a Chinese think tank devoted to issues relating to religion and the rule of law. 

Professors Brett Scharffs and Cole Durham of Brigham Young University’s International Center for Law and Religion Studies once again coordinated the academic component of the program, which involved a number of legal experts from China and around the world, including Liu Peng, Joanna Zhang, and Cathy Wang of the Pu Shi Institute and Professor Zhang Qianfang from Peking University, with foreign experts J. Clifford Wallace (Senior Judge and Chief Judge Emeritus, U.S. 9th Circuit), Chris Seiple (President, Institute for Global Engagement), Brian J. Grim (Senior Research, Pew Research Center), Mauro de Lorenzo (Vice President, Freedom and Free Enterprise, John Templeton Foundation), R. Kent Greenawalt (Columbia University), Zachary Calo (Valparaiso University), and Johan van der Vyver (Emory University) of the United States, as well as Professors Gerhard Robbers (Germany), Jeroen Temperman (Netherlands), Rik Torfs (Belgium), and Renata Uitz (Hungary).