Law and Literature at John Jay: Sen, Anastaplo, Satire and More

Next week the John Jay College of Criminal Justice will be holding its Third Biennial Literature and Law Conference.  The conference runs from a keynote on the evening of Thursday, March 29--Amartya Sen’s lecture, "Law and Ideas of Justice"–and continues throughout the day on Friday, March 30.  Several session will be devoted to Sen’s work; another featured speaker is George Anastaplo, Loyola University of Chicago School of Law, whose lecture is "Justice and Community, Ancient and Modern.”  A session will take up Anastaplo’s landmark civil liberties case; participants will include Roger Newman, Hugo Black’s biographer and the editor of the Yale Biographical Dictionary of American law, and Judge Jed Rakoff.  Many legal historians would find papers of interest in the other sessions; I’ll note several devoted to satire, with speakers drawn from academia and from the media, including writers for The Onion and the Daily Show.  The complete program is here.