This is just a draft agenda we’ve been asked to pass along in light of the Cardozo debacle (as with the Cardozo conference, please be advised there’s no objection or concern about the panelists named, just that there are no Indian law scholars):

First Amendment WorkshopDiscussion Group: Free Exercise in the Wake of Employment Division v. Smith

In April, 1990 the Supreme Court held in Employment Division v. Smith, 494 U.S. 872 (1990), that “an individual’s religious beliefs” do not “excuse him from compliance with an otherwise valid law prohibiting conduct that the State is free to regulate.”  This embrace of a belief/ conduct dichotomy reversed years of prior precedent, discarding a regime within which burdens on free exercise were assessed under the strict scrutiny rubric normally associated with government limits on fundamental rights.  This panel will explore where matters stand on the twentieth anniversary of Smith, discussing the current status of the Free Exercise Clause in the light of Smith, subsequent decisions of the Court, and parallel attempts to revive free exercise as a meaningful guarantee through federal and state statutes.

Moderator: Professor William Marshall, University of North Carolina School of Law.

Discussants: Professor Daniel Conkle, Indiana  University, Maurer School of Law; Professor Caroline Corbin, University of Miami School of Law; Professor James Dwyer, College of William and Mary, Marshall-Wythe School of Law; Professor Leslie Griffin, University of Houston Law Center; Professor Kurt Lash, University of Illinois College of Law; Professor Douglas Laycock, University of Virginia School of Law; Professor Christopher Lund, Wayne State University School of Law.

By way of contrast, consider the University of South Dakota’s conference earlier this year, which featured Marci Hamilton, Chris Lund, and other prestigious scholars that do not focus on Indian law, as well as scholars and practitioners that do — Zacheree Kelin (who litigated the Arizona Snowbowl case), Klint Cowan (who litigated the Comanche religious freedom case), and Charles Grignon (an American Indian religious practitioner).