During the past fifteen years, the European Court of Human Rights has been engaging seriously with the freedom of religion and belief under Article 9 of the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. In many ways, the scope and ambition of the Court's jurisprudence has been breathtaking, especially when viewed from the United States; but many questions have begun to emerge about whether the Court has established an intellectual and conceptual architecture that is up to the task of dealing with the increasingly complex cases involving religious freedom that the Court is currently facing and will soon face. Accordingly, several sections of the Association of American Law Schools sponsored a program in January, 2010 entitled, “The Freedom of Religion and Belief Jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights: Legal, Moral, Political and Religious Perspectives.”

Religion and politics create volatile issues in many parts of the world and have been intensely debated in America. Recent charges and counter-charges about “godless humanists” and “religious zealots” have been heated. With an election campaign underway, the subject of religion in public life remains a potential iceberg issue of 1988 — massive but submerged. On the eve of the bicentennial of the Bill of Rights, it is plain that controversies about religion in public life are as lively and potent today as when the First Amendment was being debated nearly 200 years ago.

But how do the American people view the place of religion in public life today? Is there a vital knowledge of the Constitution? Where do Americans currently draw the line between church and state? Are there significant limits to tolerance? Are there important differences between the general public and key leadership groups? Is there less religious tolerance today than 20 or 30 years ago?

To answer such questions and help assess the state of the union regarding religion and public life, the Williamsburg Charter Foundation commissioned a nationwide opinion survey. The purpose of the study was to learn how people view these issues 200 years into the American experiment. The motive was not to find out simply what the majority wants changed or restricted. After all, the Bill of Rights was written to guarantee the rights of minorities against the will of the majority.

Taken as a whole, the Roman Catholic Bishops' 1983 pastoral letter on war and peace, “The Challenge of Peace, God's Promise, and Our Response” has two purposes: first, to assist Catholics in the formation of their consciences; and, second, to contribute to the ongoing public policy debate concerning the morality of war in general, and of nuclear war in particular. This article will address the stated purposes of and the suggestions made in the pastoral letter from the vantage point of American statutory and constitutional law. It will make no attempt to provide definitive legal answers to the many questions raised by and in the letter, for there are none in this complex and challenging area of law. Its purpose is to raise some of the practical legal and moral questions which are critical to the conscientious choices of the individuals to whom the letter is addressed: government officials, citizens, members of the armed services, workers in defense industries, clergy and religious and others.

The letter calls upon each person to whom it is addressed to “probe the meaning of the moral choices which are ours as Christians” respecting the issue of nuclear war, and states that peace “is the fruit of ideas and decisions taken in the political, cultural, social, military, and legal sectors of life.” It correctly recognizes that conscientious choices are not made by individuals in a moral vacuum, but by “citizens [who] wish to affirm [their] loyalty to [their] country and its ideas” and who must also remain both “faithful to the universal principles proclaimed by the Church” and sensitive to the needs of the world as a whole.

In the summer of 2011, Dutch teacher Duran Renkema was dismissed from the orthodox Reformed school in Oegstgeest because he had left his wife and family, and decided to openly live together with his boyfriend. In the court case that followed, the judge ruled that the publicly funded denominational school did not have the right to dismiss a teacher who otherwise functioned well, merely because of his sexual identity. In collecting funds so it could take the case to the Equal Treatment Commission, the Dutch gay rights organization Coc emphasized that this was the first time that a teacher at a religious school publicly dared to contest his dismissal.

Although the teacher himself also initially threatened to put the issue before the Equal Treatment Commission (ETC), he later withdrew the case, stating, “my family, partner and I need rest to come to terms with what happened.” He indicated that he hoped that “the discussion and dialogue in the Reformed churches will not come to a halt here, but that they will take this opportunity to show the gay community in the Netherlands that the message in the Bible is one of love.

Valparaiso University School of Law and the Christian Legal Society annually present a symposium on a critical public issue which is examined from a variety of perspectives. Between October 28-31, 1987, a major symposium was held entitled: “Perspectives on South African Liberation.” In the light of press and other media restrictions in effect since a state of emergency was declared in South Africa on June 12, 1986, and the banning of all political activity by 17 anti-apartheid organizations on February 24, 1988, it is crucial that the world community have access to current information and analysis concerning developments in that tragic land.

The Pretoria regime has renewed the state of emergency for a third year following an unprecedented three-day nationwide protest strike on June 6-8 by more than two million black workers mobilized by the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) and other anti-apartheid groups to protest the recent bannings, a proposed restrictive labor bill, the continuation of apartheid and the regime's violence. These comments are written on June 16, the 12th anniversary of the Soweto student uprising (now commonly known as South African Youth Day) as several million black workers again defied the regime by staying away from work in honor of the hundred of blacks killed following the 1976 protests against apartheid education.

Imagine that you are watching a hearing of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee on television. Each member of the Committee is asking questions of, and in some cases interrogating, the president's most recent nominee to the United States Supreme Court. She is an accomplished attorney with not only a law degree from an elite institution but also a doctorate in biochemistry and specialization in private practice on issues over which science and law overlap and intersect. For several years she has served on the federal bench on the D.C. circuit and has done so admirably, showing professional competence and jurisprudential insight that has become the envy of her peers, some of whom disagree with her conservative judicial philosophy. Over the years, she has published well-received articles in numerous law reviews and peer-reviewed science publications dealing with issues as wide ranging as the Daubert standard, the reliability of DNA testing in capital murder cases, and whether the Supreme Court's holdings in its reproductive rights cases provide support for a constitutional right to clone oneself.

Like ourselves, people in the medieval world took law seriously. They had great law schools such as Bologna where professors expounded the Roman law of Justinian's corpus iuris civilis. They regarded the rule of law as a model for the social order. They explained their political disputes in terms of constitutional questions and their personal quarrels in terms of rights violated. Without this heritage the modern world would be inconceivably different.

They, however, lived in an Age of Faith while we live in a secular society. Surely, one would think, they must have conceived of law quite differently than we do. It would be illuminating to travel back in time and speak with a medieval jurist.

I have tried to imagine what that experience would be like. What follows is a report of a conversation between a modern student of law and legal history and a 14th century Bolognese law professor. My rule in constructing it was to allow my medieval jurist to stray as little as possible from opinions that prominent men of his age actually did express. His views on law reflect those of Bartolus and Baldus who wrote in his own century. His views on theology reflect those of Thomas Aquinas who wrote in the century before and with whose works Bartolus, Baldus and other 14th century jurists were familiar.