This article introduces the internationalism motif in Bahá’i political and legal thought and Bahá’i; arguments concerning the place of divine legal claims in contemporary debates about models of world order. In contrast to theories such as the clash of civilizations thesis of world politics—which view divine legal and political claims as a likely source of conflict and violence—the relative and progressive concept of revelation in the Bahá’i Faith argues for religion as a potentially unifying and foundational force in the evolution of a universal civilization. Bahá’i perspectives on internationalism also illustrate a distinct concept of divine law articulated within the Persianate and Muslim traditions of nineteenth century political and legal thought.

Reverend Professor Donald MacLeod - Supporting Witness (Professor of Systematic Theology, Free Church College, Edinburgh)

Sulian Stone Eagle Herney - Supporting Witness (Mi'Kmaq First Nation People, Nova Scotia, Canada)

This inquiry precognition (evidence) is submitted to The Scottish Office Inquiry Reporters Unit, 9th September 1994, in accordance with letter Ref. P/PP/75/W/4 of 19 July 1994: Town and Country Planning (Scotland) Act 1972 - Application by Redland Aggregates Limited to Develop a Coastal Quarry at Lingerabay, South Harris.

Ever since the Puritans sighted their earthly Paradise somewhere near Plymouth Rock, the New World has been a nesting ground for sects, cults, revivals and alternative religions, both homegrown and imported. Today's cult religious groups, such as the Unification Church or the Church of Scientology, are like their predecessors in offering their adherents not merely an alternative religion but an alternative life style. The English Puritans, for example, were a small sect, most of whose members lacked political and economic status in the dominant culture. Their religion offered them an alternative vision of human worth that required their removal from the larger culture and acceptance of a counter-cultural life, including homogeneity in dress and demeanor, and a daily regimen in which most of their thoughts and activities focused on the religious community and its goals. In return for their immersion in the sect, adherents were granted membership in a family of like-minded people and the sense that their lives had meaning and value.

On December 29, 1170, in the late afternoon (and thus after the main meal of the day but shortly before vespers), four knights entered Canterbury Cathedral. Impelled, as far as history knows, by the angry words of King Henry II, “will no one rid me of this turbulent priest,” they had come to confront Archbishop Thomas Becket and win King Henry's favor by forcing the long-simmering dispute between Becket and his king to some final resolution. When the Archbishop refused their conflicting demands and reacted with scorn to their insults, the knights withdrew, only to arm themselves and follow Becket into the cathedral. As the traditional account has it:

[t]he bell for vespers began to sound, and the archbishop, with his cross borne in front of him, made his way in as usual into the cathedral. Hardly had he reached the ascent to the choir than the noise of armed men and the shout of the knights announced that the pursuers were at hand. “Where is the archbishop, where is the traitor?” resounded through the hollow aisles, mingling strangely with the recitation of the psalms in the choir. Becket, hearing this, turned back a few steps, and calmly awaited their approach in the corner of the northern transept before the little altar of S[t .] Benedict. “Here,” he cried, “is the archbishop—no traitor, but a priest of God.” Awed by his demeanor, and perhaps by the sanctity of the place, no one dared strike. A parley began. They sought to lash their failing courage into action by words. A hasty and insulting epithet gave Fitz Urse the opportunity he wanted. A blow aimed at the archbishop's head only knocked his skull-cap to the ground, but it was enough to loose the bandogs of hell. A stroke from Tracy cut off the tonsured back of [Becket's] skull, another from Brito brought him to his knees.

Welcome back to the afternoon session. We would now like to entertain questions from the audience, as well as questions from our scholars.

Mr. Neuhaus referred to Dr. King in his remarks, but in a sense the question is to the whole panel. I wonder, since the emphasis was on civil rights, why there was not a bit more inquiry into the black religious experience as a foundation for civil rights. And, specifically, I wonder why there was not more inquiry into the role of 19th century black clergy, both antebellum and post-civil-war, in forming a moral consensus that led to such things as the passage of the civil rights act of 1975 and subsequent concern for civil rights legislation and some of the decisions of the Supreme Court which addressed those concerns. It seems to me that Martin Luther King is a relatively late figure to cite as someone who articulates the black perspective on religion and civil rights. He is, in some ways, the culmination of a long tradition, and I find that a singular omission, frankly, given the focus of the symposium.

Theology and law share much in common, including a long history of justifying violence against women. Critics of legal and religious institutions need not look far to find texts offering evidence that both kinds of institutions are hopelessly mired in a patriarchal history that renders them obsolete, and apparently unable to offer anything significant concerning justice for young women victims of abuse. These ancient texts unapologetically proclaim that young women were to be treated as property of their fathers or husbands:

One of the most interesting features of biblical law is the extent to which it is pervaded by narrative. Many biblical laws have a quasinarrative form, while others include within themselves a narrative reference of some sort. In their present context, all biblical laws have a narrative setting. Wherever one finds law in the Bible, one is in the presence of narrative as well.

Despite its pervasiveness, this juxtaposition of law and narrative poses something of a challenge to the reader of the biblical text. Certainly, these two genres may be seen to call into play different conventions of reading. What, then, is the effect of their persistent association on how one reads the text of which both are a part?

What is the difference between the conventions underlying our reading of biblical narrative and biblical law? One difference may perhaps be illustrated by comparing the following two passages:

The LORD said to Moses, ‘Yet one more plague I will bring upon Pharaoh and upon Egypt; afterwards he will let you go hence; when he lets you go, he will drive you away completely.’ (Exodus 11:1)

The LORD said to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt, ‘This month shall be for you the beginning of months; it shall be the first month of the year for you.’ (Exodus 12:1-2)

It is a pleasure and an honor to be asked to contribute to a festschrift dedicated to that fountain of youth, energy, and excellence, John Noonan, who has been a close friend and a professional colleague for forty years. John has written about many of the legal topics that are closest to my own heart and I have chosen to include in this volume a piece that combines many of our joint interests: legal history, the Cardozo family, and judicial ethics. Judge Noonan has in fact alluded quite specifically in two of his own pieces to the career that figures in my contribution. My subject is Cardozo, not the twentieth-century Benjamin of high repute featured in Judge Noonan's Persons and Masks of the Law, but his father, the nineteenth-century Albert of low repute, whose career figures in Judge Noonan's exhaustive treatise on Bribes. The legal career and the approach of the nineteenth century Cardozo to law is an interesting and instructive prelude to the more common study of the contribution of the twentieth century Cardozo.

“Human” rights discourse is inherently multicultural, and multicultural discourse is messy. The academese for that goes something like this: I am an “agnostic and ambivalent subject of a double, decentered multicultural choice” (see the following quotations) and my text comes from a minority stance in a “different context.”

Kathleen Brady's article, Religious Group Autonomy: Further Reflections About What Is At Stake, is intended to shore up her position that religious organizations deserve extremely broad autonomy from the law. Her thesis is two-fold. First, she believes that the law should not interfere with the internal operations of religious organizations, which is the position she has taken before. Second, she backs off the position apparent in her earlier work that religious organizations do great good, and, therefore, deserve autonomy. Now she posits a new thesis that religious organizations need to be protected from regulation, because they are working out the truth, and society needs the truth. This latter principle rests on the empirical claim that no one can fully know the truth (or even relative harm and benefit), and, therefore, when the law limits religious organizations, it halts the development of truth.

There was a time when I would have agreed with her, but I was then taught that my views were not based in reality. The problem posed by religious entities, even when they intend to seek the truth, is that they are run by humans, with the full spectrum of human fallibility. On this score, religious organizations really are no different than large corporations. The whole range of destructive behavior can be seen in both: fraud, extortion, misappropriation of funds, lying, deceit, covering up scandals like child abuse or doctoring financial records for the sake of the organization's image, and the list goes on. If religious actors are not deterred and punished for bad acts, they wreak great wrongs. This inescapable empirical reality plainly undermines Brady's earlier claims that seemed to imply that religious organizations deserve autonomy for the good they do.