SYMPOSIUM: RELIGIOUS VALUES AND CORPORATE DECISION MAKING: AN INTERDISCIPLINARY INTERFAITH CONFERENCE FOR CORPORATE EXECUTIVES AND LEGAL COUNSEL1

Fordham Journal of Corporate & Financial Law, 2006 by Treanor, William Michael, Uelmen, Amelia J

WELCOME AND INTRODUCTION

MS. UELMEN:2 At this point we will get started. I am Amy Uelmen, the Director of Fordham Law School's Institute on Religion, Law and Lawyer's Work. Welcome. I will be your emcee for the day.

Just a few words to get us started and to express our hopes for today's program. As we were putting together today's program, at a certain point I envisioned our agenda as something of a response to the recent corporate scandals and the search for resources to retrieve a sense of orientation and professional integrity. Talking this over with Joe Geoghan,3 he mused, and this is not an exact quote, "I think the issues here stand on their own. They are bigger and much more important than that." I think with that he really captured the heart of our work today and the Institute's work as a whole.

True, for many, religious values can serve as an important source of orientation in the midst of a crisis. But the deeper challenge is more constructive and more positive, and perhaps in many ways more ordinary. This challenge is to articulate what religious values capture and express at the heart of human experience, and then how this can inform all aspects of life, including the law, including business life.

Today's program is also designed to acknowledge and take very seriously the important questions which arise in the course of this endeavor. For example, in our increasingly complex and pluralistic business environments, might drawing on religious beliefs generate otherwise avoidable conflicts and misunderstandings?

My deepest hope is that today might be both an opportunity to openly discuss the obstacles we see, and also to discover in the context of inter-disciplinary and inter-faith conversation a vast terrain of common ground.

So thank you to all of you who have worked hard to enrich the panels and spread the word, and also to Fordham's Center for Corporate securities and Financial Law, which is co-sponsoring the program, the Economics Department and the Business School, and to the enthusiastic help from our students on the Journal of Corporate and Financial Law.

I would also like to thank Dean William Michael Treanor4 for his unflagging support for this ongoing conversation. And now he would like to say a few words of welcome as well.

DEAN TREANOR: Thanks very much, Amy.

On behalf of Fordham Law School, I am very pleased to welcome all of you to this conference, which I am sure will be a fabulous day of discussion. Thanks to all who have worked so hard to put it together, and special thanks to our two speakers who traveled from Italy especially for this occasion and who bring to our conversation the breadth and depth of international perspectives.

I am especially proud that this conference is part of the University's Sapientia et Doctrina (Wisdom and Learning) Lecture Series, which, in the founding spirit and continuing mission of Fordham, is designed to emphasize rigorous scholarship, lively intellectual exchange, and valuesbased education. What better model for our students than to see lawyers, economists, and business experts all engaged in a serious conversation that takes to heart the important question of how religious values might intersect with corporate decision making.

And finally, I would like to acknowledge the terrific work of Russell Pearce5 of our faculty, who is the Director of the Institute on Law, Religion, and Lawyer's Work, and Amy Uelmen, who is the Director for the program, who have done not just enormous work in putting together this program but have really changed, I think, American legal education by bringing these questions, the questions of the intersection of religious values and lawyering, onto the table, bringing them into the discussion. It is really fabulous and important work and I want to acknowledge them both for the fabulous work for the program and their great work in putting together this day's discussions.

So welcome all. Thank you so very much for coming. At this point I would like to turn matters over to Professor Pearce.

1. The symposium was hosted at Fordham University School of Law on February 23, 2004. It has been edited to remove minor cadences of speech that appear awkward in writing and to identify significant sources when referred to by the speakers.

2. Amy Uelmen is the Director of the Fordham University School of Law Institute on Religion, Law and Lawyer's Work. Recently Professor Uelmen was named the recipient of the Charles Carroll Award by the Guild of Catholic Lawyers of the Archdiocese of New York. Under Uelmen's direction, and in conjunction with founder Professor Russell G. Pearce, the Institute on Religion, Law, and Lawyer's Work has gained a national profile and become a standard for other law schools that are seeking to promote dialogue on religious values and the practice of law.

3. Joseph E. Geoghan, Esq., is Retired Vice-President and General Counsel, and Member of the Board of Directors, of Union Carbide Corporation.

4. William Michael Treanor is the Dean of the Fordham University School of Law.