The often perplexing issue of where one group of persons' rights end and another group's rights begin will be explored during the 1996 Yale Law Journal Symposium, to be held Thursday, Nov. 14, in Rm. 127 of the Law School, 127 Wall St.
Titled "Race, Sexuality, Religion: Group Conflict and the Constitution," the symposium will examine issues such as affirmative action, voting districts designed to increase minority representation and same-sex marriage.
"It's a broad topic," says Oona Hathaway, editor-in-chief of the Yale Law Journal. "We wanted to use the symposium to contribute in an area that needs further work and further discussion. We're trying to get people together to seek comments on aspects of issues that haven't really been drawn in the literature yet."
To achieve such a dialogue organizers of the conference -- who include seven other law students in addition to Ms. Hathaway -- "deliberately" formed panels that represent a variety of viewpoints, Ms. Hathaway says.
"We wanted a good mix of people, backgrounds and ideas so that we could get an interesting discussion," she notes. Their search resulted in a group of symposium participants expert in politics, public policy and jurisprudence from the Manhattan Institute, Princeton University, and the law schools of Columbia and Georgetown universities and the Universities of Connecticut, Maryland, and Michigan.
The symposium will consist of two panel discussions, both moderated by Jack M. Balkin, the Lafayette S. Foster Professor of Law at Yale. The first discussion, focusing primarily on issues of sexuality, will take place at 1 p.m. The second will concentrate on issues of race and will take place at 3:30 p.m. The symposium is free and open to the public.
Panelists will prepare a position paper, based on their discourse at the symposium, for publication in the June 1997 issue of the Yale Law Journal, says Ms. Hathaway.
For more information, call 432-1666.