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Due to security concerns FREE does not post the date or location of current conferences. Current program topics are:
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 Environmental Economics, Law, & Policy
A Program for Editors of Environmental & Natural Resource
Law Reviews |
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Things Counterintuitive
A Program for Social Entrepreneurs |
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Science, Health, Nanotechnology, & the Law
A Program for Federal Judges, State Supreme Court
Justices, & Law Professors |
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Terrorism, Civil Liberty, & National Security
A Program for Federal Judges, State Supreme Court
Justices, & Law Professors
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Environmental Stewardship
A Program for Religious Leaders
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Past Program Agendas |
Please
contact us if you’d like additional information.
No legal area has spawned more specialized law journals than environmental and natural resources law. There are at least thirty-five law journals focusing solely on environmental and natural resource topics. Unlike other academic disciplines, where scholars submit their work to peers for review and publication, legal scholars publish the majority of their work in law reviews and journals that are managed and edited by law students.
Yet these journals are highly influential. Judges and policymakers frequently cite law review articles in support of their decisions. This is particularly true when they choose to press a theory or argue for a result that diverges from established law. Using basic concepts from the fields of economics, science, and risk analysis, we will explain how the application of these analytic tools can foster social wellbeing and enhance environmental quality.
Join us as we explore how just about all the interesting and important truths we know about nature are counterintuitive. For example: Aristotle’s long-accepted but false assertion that heavy objects fall faster than lighter ones, the apparent motion of the sun around the earth, the moon illusion (Do you know about this?), the smoothness of the Earth relative to a billiard ball (it’s much smoother), special and general relativity, evolution of the “Monty Hall Paradox,” and a host of visual and cognitive illusions.
Economics and evolution are counterintuitive. Life looks intelligently designed, so our inclination is to infer that there must be an intelligent designer. Similarly, the economy looks designed, so our natural inclination is to infer that we need a master planner. In fact, emergence and complexity theory explains how the principles of self-organization and emergence cause complex systems to arise from simple systems without a top-down designer. Is Charles Darwin’s natural selection Adam Smith’s invisible hand?
Physicist Richard Feynman first suggested that devices and materials could someday be fabricated to atomic specifications: “The principles of physics, as far as I can see, do not speak against the possibility of maneuvering things atom by atom.”
Nanotechnology is a group of technologies in which the structure of matter is controlled at the scale of small numbers of atoms. Nanomaterials are already used in a range of products —from computer chips to sunscreen. By 2014, a projected $2.6 trillion in global manufactured goods, about 15 percent of total output, will incorporate nanotechnology. Nanotechnology has the potential to reshape technology with important applications in energy, the environment, medicine, and manufacturing.
Like most technological revolutions, this one will have some downsides. Animal studies have shown that nanoparticles can enter the bloodstream, cross the blood-brain barrier, and damage tissue and DNA. Join us as we explore how nanotechnology may affect society as a whole, including human health, the environment, and the judiciary.
FREE’s conference on terrorism and civil liberties is back once again. This topic was ranked the “most interesting and important” in our 2006 judicial survey, and our conferences on the topic receive rave reviews. Calls for increased national security continue to threaten our civil liberties, and debate over this encroachment persists. How can we best address calls for increased national security? What are the tradeoffs we face? Will civil liberties in the U.S. give ground as they largely have in Europe? Many influential and far-reaching decisions are made from the bench, thus, an understanding of these issues is essential if we are to preserve both security and responsible liberty.
A growing number of religious groups are pursuing a myriad of causes under the umbrella of “social justice.” Unfortunately, many of these religious leaders see an inherent conflict between a society of free and morally responsible individuals and their efforts. They assert, in language grounded in liberation theology, that the key to social justice is the equitable distribution of social and natural resources.
Knowledge of economic principles and the role of entrepreneurship can help religious leaders avoid politically motivated pitfalls that disproportionately affect the world’s poor. FREE’s program, designed for an ecumenical group of religious leaders, explores how a culture that values America’s founding ideals, secure property rights, and responsible prosperity can also foster social and economic wellbeing. These leaders are influential, providing pathways to disseminate market-based policy ideas, potentially to millions of Americans.
*Pending funding we are prepared to offer two programs for this audience.
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