Date/Time
Date(s) - October 23, 2025
5:00 pm - 6:00 pm
Location
Room 226, Riverfront Campus, University of Detroit Mercy
The McElroy Lecture on Law and Religion provides a forum for prominent thinkers to address fundamental issues of law and religion. The 26th annual lecture is set for Thursday, Oct. 23, from 5-6 p.m. in Room 226 at the Riverfront Campus. A reception follows the lecture in the atrium.
This year’s lecture, titled “Next Steps for Church Autonomy” will be presented by Stephanie Barclay, professor of Law at Georgetown University Law School and faculty co-director of the Georgetown Center for the Constitution. The annual McElroy Lecture is made possible through a bequest from Detroit Mercy Law alumnus Philip J. McElroy.
This lecture will examine emerging frontiers in church autonomy jurisprudence across several critical contexts:
- the doctrine’s application as a defense to defamation suits arising from religious discipline
- tensions between ministerial exception principles and employment protections
- the use of collateral appeals to prevent process as punishment in autonomy disputes
- proper judicial deference to internal religious governance.
The lecture explores potential doctrinal developments that would be important to both religious liberty and individual rights while avoiding the constitutional hazards of excessive entanglement with religious affairs.
Barclay’s research focuses on the role our different democratic institutions play in protecting minority rights, particularly at the intersection of free speech and religious exercise. Her work is published or is forthcoming in leading journals such as the Harvard Law Review, the Chicago Law Review, the University of Pennsylvania Law Review and the Yale Law Journal Forum. Barclay is a faculty affiliate at the Constitutional Law Center at Stanford Law School and a Nootbaar Fellow at the Nootbaar Institute on Law, Religion, and Ethics at Pepperdine University.
Register here.
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