It is my pleasure to welcome you to the fourth annual Rudolph C. Barnes Sr. Symposium at the Law School. The Barnes Symposium presents a unique opportunity to bring together the Law School and cross campus academic communities with scholars, practitioners and policy makers from around the world. Sponsored by the Law School, the Barnes Symposium provides a forum to engage in serious academic inquiry on pressing issues of law and morality understood in the broadest sense.

This year's Barnes Symposium, Legitimacy, Legal Development & Change , will examine the general problems of legal development and change against the backdrop of current challenges for both development and military law or civil affairs practitioners in areas like the Islamic world. Legal development is never an easy exercise, but is all the more difficult in conflict or post-conflict societies. In this way, we hope to make a small contribution to our current Gordian knot policy challenge.

I hope you will join us at the Law School for a stimulating examination of these issues by prominent scholars and practitioners. Moreover, the proceedings will be shared live with overseas universities in the Southeast Asian part of the Islamic world where the Law School has operated projects since 2000. For a broader and lasting contribution, the proceedings are also being recorded and will be posted in streaming form on this website for future reference and academic use.

I look forward to seeing you at the Law School Feb 2nd & 3rd.

Walter "Jack" Pratt, Jr.