Conferences
Conferences 2026-27
Church and State – with a Difference! (postponed)
October 22-23, 2026, NYU
Co-sponsored with the Jean Monnet Center for International and Regional Economic Law and Justice at NYU
The relationship between Church and State has been a staple theme of both political theory, religious studies and constitutional law for centuries. In the political life of states it has, too, ebbed and flowed for millennia.
In the current context of acute political polarization, not least in Israel and the United States, it is, once again a major flash point. While Israel and the United States have approached the relationship between religion and state from opposite directions—Israel integrating religion into the state from its inception, while the U.S. enshrined the separation of church and state in its Constitution—there is, on a theoretical level, a growing convergence. In Israel, doubts about the viability of a Jewish and democratic state, as defined in its basic constitutional framework, are becoming more pronounced. Meanwhile, the architects of Project 2025’s Christian nationalist agenda in the U.S. are actively working to dismantle the separation of church and state.
In the extensive political theory and legal literature, the relationship between church and state is typically presented as a reflection of a tension between the liberal-democratic state and religion. Just as often (though with some exceptions) Church (religion) and State (liberal democracies) are presented as monolithic concepts. Similarly, the "State" itself is frequently treated as a singular, undifferentiated entity, with little attention given to its internal subdivisions.
The conference has four main objectives, each of which complicates the existing theoretical framework, thereby creating opportunities for new avenues of action.
The first objective is to unpack “religion” and examine instead “religions” in their diversity. We will explore the relationship of “church(es)” and State as regards Christianity (including its many Catholic and Protestant subdivisions), Judaism (it, too, is not monolithic encompassing Ultra-Orthodox Misnagedim and Hasidim, Religious Zionist, Conservative, and Reformist streams) and Islam (including Sunni, Shia, and other sects).
Moreover, we will explore the relationship from a religious perspective – of which, relatively speaking, there is far less both knowledge and analysis. How do the three major monotheistic religions address the issue?
It is, not, however, only religion that requires unpacking. Liberalism, itself a form of a “civic religion,” and democracy are far from monolithic. Thus, a second component would be to examine the issue from the perspective of different iterations of liberalism and varied notions of democracy.
A third component of the project will try to chart the different reciprocal influences – resistance, influence, cooptation etc. – of these different forms of religion, liberalism and democracy.
Finally, the “State” itself is not a monolithic concept. The fourth component will examine various forms of non-unitary states—federal, confederal, and regional—as well as the dynamics between central and local governments in both unitary and federal systems. We will explore how the relationship between Church and State unfolds within these multi-tiered structures, particularly in the interplay between the whole and its constituent parts.
State and local governments play a crucial role in shaping policies related to religion in areas such as education, public funding, and community initiatives. For instance, state legislatures may enact laws regarding religious accommodation in schools or workplaces, while local governments might navigate disputes over public religious displays or zoning laws for places of worship. This decentralized structure allows communities to reflect their religious diversity and cultural traditions, but it can also create tensions when state or local policies challenge federal legal standards. In some cases, conflicts arise when local policies—such as restrictions on religious symbols or exemptions for faith-based organizations—are perceived as either infringing on religious liberties or violating the principle of church-state separation. Ultimately, federalism enables a balance between national legal protections and regional and local autonomy.
Captive Minds: A Study of Manipulation, Prof. Assaf Sharon – Book Event
November 25, 2026, Buchmann Faculty of Law, Tel Aviv University
Co-sponsored with Department of Philosophy, TAU
Manipulation is as old as history itself, yet Aldous Huxley’s paraphrase of Churchill rings truer than ever: “never have so many been manipulated so much by so few.” Manipulation presents a clear danger to liberal democracy today. Demagogues undermine civic discussion, and propagandists and conspiracy theorists create cognitive traps that erode critical thinking.
What exactly is manipulation, and what sets it apart from other forms of influence? How does it differ from convincing, attracting, or nudging? Drawing on examples from mythology, literature, history, and politics, philosophers Margalit and Sharon argue that manipulation is not just a form of deceit and intellectual harm; it is, above all, an exercise of power. Manipulation exploits mental weaknesses and vulnerabilities with the goal of establishing control. Whereas liberal philosophers overlook manipulation, instead treating coercion as the primary form of political domination, Margalit and Sharon argue that manipulation should be seen as coercion’s insidious counterpart in undermining human freedom.
Public support is fundamental to the legitimacy of government. Today, political manipulation is corrupting the formation and expression of public opinion, making manipulation a driving force of the global crisis of democratic decline. A timely work, but also a work for all times, Captive Minds stands as the definitive study of a pervasive threat to political freedom and the increasingly fragile institutions that sustain it.
Impermissible Punishments, How Prison became a problem for Democracy, Prof. Judith Resnik – Book Event (postponed)
Postponed - December 12, 2026, Buchmann Faculty of Law, Tel Aviv University
Co-sponsored with the Minerva Center for Human Rights and Taubenschlag Institute of Criminal Law at the Buchmann Faculty of Law
Can prisons escape their ties to plantations and concentration camps? Judith Resnik, Arthur Liman Professor of Law at Yale Law School and the Founding Director of the Arthur Liman Center for Public Interest Law explores the history of punishment inside prisons and the rules that organize prisons. Resnik charts the invention of the corrections profession that called for decent conditions while imposing radical restrictions on human movement as if doing so was normal. She weaves together the stories of people who debated how to punish and the stories of people living under the regimes that resulted.
Painfully relevant today as some government officials embrace dehumanizing punishments anew, Impermissible Punishments excavates the first-ever international rules aiming to improve the treatment of prisoners, which the League of Nations adopted in 1934 as the Nazis rose to power. Her trans-Atlantic account documents the impact of World War II, the United Nations, the U.S. Civil Rights movement, and of pioneering prisoners who insisted law protected their dignity as individuals. Resnik maps the results, including a trial in the United States about the constitutionality of whipping, which was Arkansas’ preferred “discipline” in the 1960s. This book traces the constitutional challenges thereafter to hyper-crowded cells, filth, violence, and profound isolation, as well as the cross-border expansion of the prison industry, waves of abolition efforts, and the impact of legal precepts rejecting “excessive,” “cruel and unusual,” and “degrading” sanctions. Exploring the interdependency of people in and out of prisons, Impermissible Punishments argues that governments committed to equality cannot set out to ruin people and therefore many contemporary forms of punishment need to end.
Legality in an Era of Illiberal Transformations
March 19-20, 2027, Princeton University
Co-sponsored with the journal Law and Ethics of Human Rights (LEHR), the Center for Applied Research on Risks to Democracy at Tel Aviv University (CARRD), the Program in Law and Normative Thinking at Princeton University (PLANT), and the College of Law and Business (Israel).
In recent years, the world has entered an era of illiberal transformations. Across democratic states, the vocabulary of constitutionalism — rights, due process, the rule of law, proportionality, judicial review — has become a preferred instrument of those attacking the order it was meant to protect. Scholars have variously described this turn as “constitutional retrogression”, “abusive constitutionalism”, “autocratic legalism”, and “illiberal legality”. Each framing illuminates something. None fully explains the deeper puzzle: why, at this moment in history, despite the memory of Weimar and then Nazi legalism, after decades of human rights consolidation and the global spread of constitutional review, has the legal form and language become so readily available to projects of domination? The workshop will convene scholars from law and related fields to examine the reasons and characteristics for this shift, and explore whether and how a return to liberal constitutionalism remains a viable option. We see you as a leading voice in this field, uniquely positioned to advance pioneering thinking on the relationship between legality and illiberal transformation, as framed in the concept memo below.
The 14th Privacy Conference
TBD, Buchmann Faculty of Law, Tel Aviv University
Co-sponsored by the Chief Justice Meir Shamgar Center for Digital Law and Innovation
Privacy studies are an emerging cross-disciplinary field of study. The annual workshop on privacy and cyber studies is a platform for presenting and discussing cutting edge studies on privacy. Participants are typically from a broad range of disciplines: computer science, information systems, engineering, law, media studies, psychology and sociology, economics and more. The workshop is based on a call for papers, and submissions are carefully selected.
