We live in an era of remarkable and wonderful technological advances. We also live in an era of tremendous economic, environmental and social upheaval. Given these circumstances, today's leaders must make decisions of overwhelming importance in a world that is changing rapidly.

In these confusing times, what values can our leaders look to as they try to address the many challenges that we face? Which values, if followed, are most likely to bring us the security and the happiness that we desire?

Those who came before us had to survive difficult times of their own, and their experiences shaped the ways in which they looked at the world. Each generation taught the next generation those perspectives and those strategies that had helped them be successful; and over the centuries and even millennia, this ancient wisdom became condensed into fundamental values. We may take it for granted, since our values are such an intrinsic part of our lifestyles, but one of the greatest gifts that our ancestors gave to us are these values—the collective wisdom of the ages.

In democratic countries where the law might be influenced by religious communities, family law cases can present one of the most sensitive and complex challenges. Religious laws governing personal status and the supervision of family relations are vital components of many religions and, in some cases, crucial to the cultural survival of the religious community. However, the family laws of some religions are discriminatory towards women, same-sex couples, people of other religions, and other groups. Currently, there is heated political and scholarly debate about the tension between the norms of multiculturalism, which dictate that religious communities be allowed to preserve their values and culture, including through autonomy over family law, and liberal norms prohibiting the discrimination that religious family law can perpetrate.

One of the best known liberal advocates for restricting discriminatory cultural practices of minority groups was Susan Moller Okin. Okin maintained that many cultural minorities are more patriarchal than the surrounding culture and that the female members of the patriarchal culture might be much better off were the culture into which they were born to become extinct, if, that is, it could not be altered so as to uphold women's equality. She pointed to religious personal law as one example of a sphere in which patriarchal cultures strive to maintain autonomy at the cost of women's and girls' freedom and basic rights. Consistent with her view, nation states should not give legal autonomy over family matters to patriarchal minorities unless these minorities reform their religious laws so as not to discriminate against or impair the rights of women and girls.

I met John Noonan in the office of the late David W. Louisell in January, 1974, and remember to this day just how awestruck I was at being in the company of such great scholars. I find myself even more humbled as I pen this essay in honor of the birthday of my esteemed teacher, advisor, and friend. To be invited to join the festschrift is an extraordinary honor for a former student but it is also an immense challenge. The task of writing a coherent essay for one's professor usually ends upon graduation from law school. To write one in honor of a professor (and a favorite one at that) is an altogether new experience.

Because I write to pay tribute to a man whose manner of thinking has indelibly shaped the manner in which I teach my own students, my goal is to write an essay that builds upon the work he has done in the field of law and religion. And if, in the final analysis, it meets that standard, it will do so, in part, because of John Noonan's efforts as a teacher, scholar and role model.

“The freer women are to share their gifts with society and to assume leadership in society, the better are the prospects for the entire human community to progress in wisdom, justice and dignified living …” So argued Mary Ann Glendon, the Vatican delegate to the Fourth World Conference on Women in September, 1995. While Glendon's point is well taken, in many societies, including the Catholic Church which Glendon represented at the Conference, women often do not have the opportunity to choose their roles and share their gifts and talents with society in the manner they deem most appropriate. In patriarchal societies women's roles and contributions are often reduced to the periphery. This is the case in traditional societies where the community is viewed as the bearer of rights, and the roles assigned women are designed to ensure that they conform to the needs of the community, rather than the needs of individual women. Women are often socialized into accepting the roles mapped out for them by the community, and attempts to challenge them often lead only to ostracization by the community.

For two centuries the American dream has flourished on the revolutionary notion that a united people can actually live with and even thrive on its deepest differences.

We are a diverse lot. This is one of our great strengths as a nation. Even with time our individual distinctiveness does not wane. We relish, enrich and continue to celebrate our diversity — our multiple heritages, the cacophony and splendor of our earlier languages and customs, our myriad ethnic and racial differences. We are Everyman. Any citizen of this world can find here a common thread of identification linking himself or herself to our society.

To provide world leadership, to prosper, even to long exist as a coherent nation, we as a people must respect and preserve this notion of living with our deepest differences. It was at the heart of our forefathers' genius in conceiving and establishing this government of the people, by the people and for the people. Nowhere is this idea more critical or central to our national well-being than in the domain of religious liberty. It was for this reason that the Williamsburg Charter Foundation came into being as a core unit in the Bicentennial celebration of our U.S. Constitution and its Bill of Rights.

Unlike nonreligious legal systems, Jewish law (halakha) assumes the existence of an omnipotent, omniscient and benevolent Creator whose purposes cannot always be fathomed. Jewish law also assumes a network of relationships between and among the Creator and all human beings. As a result of these assumptions, there is purpose in every instant of life, for the individual and for the community, even though the purpose is not always readily apparent. Two overarching principles that provide great guidance are G-d's commandments that Jews, individually and collectively, live by his commandments and be holy. This article explores how these assumptions and principles, along with other applicable Jewish law concepts, apply to physician-assisted dying.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss potential principles for interpersonal dispute resolution models within an Islamic context. Such a task requires an Islamic researcher to walk a fine line in order to avoid falling in one of two methodological traps. The first trap is to draw upon western literature on conflict analysis and resolution without sufficient consideration of whether and how that literature may be applied in an Islamic setting. The subtle assumptions underlying most of the conflict intervention models developed in the west have gone undetected, until recently. The other trap is to embark upon a review of the existing Islamic literature relevant to conflict. This approach leads directly to entrapment in circles of legalistic interpretations developed centuries ago, which lack the spirit of conflict resolution as a movement for social change and an interdisciplinary field of research.

I want us to address a question or two to each other. I would like to begin with a bit of discourse with John Noonan, because there are two whole sides to the question of the Middle Ages and rights. There is a positive side that I was discussing—it is surprising the extent to which rights theories and rights practices did grow up. And, there is a negative side, and I ignored it because I knew John was going to do it, but it is equally important. Why did middle age theologians fail to recognize what is, to us, the most obvious right, that of religious liberty, when, to us, it seems that it is not just pragmatically useful, but, as John was saying at the end, that it is intrinsically right and follows from the precepts of the Gospel? But nobody in the thirteenth century grasped this, even though they had all the elements from which you can make a theory of religious liberty. Every decent theologian and canonist between 1150 and 1250 held that a person can not be forcibly converted to Christianity and that Christ will accept only a willing believer. Every one held that a person has an absolute duty to follow his own conscience, and to a twentieth century mind the obvious conclusion is, religious liberty is permitted. And, yet the thought simply never occurred to anybody. And, I think John might even have put the case more extremely. It is not just that Thomas Aquinas got it wrong, that buried in his books he made intellectual errors. Every single commonsensical, kind, decent person in the thirteenth century thought it was obviously necessary to repress heretics. I am going to ask John why, at the end of all this.