The Program in Islamic Law (PIL) has curated a list of panels from the Association of American Law Schools’s (AALS) 2025 Annual Meeting schedule that are related to Islamic law. AALS’s annual meeting will be held between January 7-11, 2025. The full program is available here. Register here. Is there a session missing that you’d like to see here? Send us a note at pil@law.harvard.edu.

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  1. Islamic Law, Co-Sponsored by Law and South Asian Studies, Wednesday, January 8, 2025 @ 12:50 PM – 2:20 PM: Author-Meets-Readers: Everyday Islamic Law and the Making of Modern South Asia.

“This is an author-meets-readers session featuring Elizabeth Lhost’s Everyday Islamic Law and the Making of Modern South Asia. This session will bring the author and scholars of Islamic law and the legal history of South Asia into rich conversation.”

Faiz Ahmed
Brown University Department of History
Speaker
Dana Lee
University of California, Irvine School of Law
Moderator
Elizabeth Lhost
University of California, Los Angeles Library
Speaker
Adnan A. Zulfiqar
Boston College Law School
Speaker
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2. Islamic Law, Co-Sponsored by International Law, Wednesday, January 8, 2025 @ 4:30 PM – 6:00 PM: Islamic Law and Social Movements.

“Islamic law often provides contested terrain upon which debates about social and legal issues and advocacy for change are forged. Narratives, arguments, debates, and practices of Islamic law have played diverse roles within social movements in both Muslim-majority and Muslim-minority contexts. This panel explores the relationship and interconnections between Islamic law and social movements in the past, present, and future, including the ways in which Islamic law is imagined, mobilized, and debated by or within social movements; the ways in which Islamic law is deployed or negotiated in legal strategy; and Islamic law and identity formation or mobilization.
Business meeting at program conclusion.”
Rabiat Akande
University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law
Moderator
Iqra Saleem Khan
Harvard Law School
Speaker from a Call for Papers
Armaan Siddiqi
Harvard University
Speaker from a Call for Papers
Muhammad Souman Elah
University of California, Los Angeles
Speaker from a Call for Papers
Ershad Uddin
Kocaeli University
Speaker from a Call for Papers
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3. Law and Religion, January 10, 2025 @ 2:40 PM – 4:10 PM: Kennedy v. Bremerton School District: Establishment Clause Law and Precedents After the Lemon Test.

“In Kennedy v. Bremerton School District (2022), the Supreme Court declared that the test for Establishment Clause doctrine set forth in Lemon v. Kurtzman (1971), which shaped cases for decades, is no longer good law. In its place, the Court declared, history and tradition should govern. In light of these developments, what will or should become of other Establishment Clause precedents (including ones that didn’t or couldn’t have purported to hinge on Lemon, like the school prayer cases)? And how should we evaluate these recent and likely future changes?

The Section held a virtual business meeting prior to the Annual Meeting.”
Speakers:
Stephanie Barclay
Georgetown University Law Center
Speaker
Sherif Girgis
Notre Dame Law School
Moderator
B. Jessie Hill
Case Western Reserve University School of Law
Speaker
Linda C. McClain
Boston University School of Law
Speaker
Mark Storslee
Emory University School of Law
Speaker
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4. Comparative Law, Co-Sponsored by European Law and East Asian Law and Society, January 11, 2025@ 8:00 AM – 9:30 AM: How to Integrate Comparative Law in the Law School Curriculum
“This panel will highlight the importance of comparative law and legal analysis with emphasis on the role that this methodology could play in law school teaching. In particular, the panel will use the experience of several law schools in and outside the U.S. to show how law schools can consider turning with more frequency to comparative legal analysis as an additional methodology to use in their general curriculum.”
Irene Calboli
Texas A&M University School of Law
Moderator
Eugenia Castrillon
IE Law School
Speaker
Charlotte Ku
Texas A&M University School of Law
Speaker
Mark A. Levin
University of Hawaii, William S. Richardson School of Law
Speaker
Fernanda Giorgia Nicola
American University, Washington College of Law
Speaker
Caterina Sganga
Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies
Speaker