Since 1533 archbishops of Canterbury have conferred academic degrees by virtue of the power invested in them by the Ecclesiastical Licences Act 1533-1534, also known as the Peter's Pence Act. Legally these so-called Lambeth degrees, named after the principal residence of the archbishop, survive as an aspect of the medieval papal authority to grant dispensations. This is, in individual cases of hardship, the see of Rome might exercise the jurisdiction vested in him as patriarch of the west—though not necessarily in other patriarchs—to confer upon an appropriate recipient the academic degree which he would have received but for some impediment.

But properly speaking, these degrees were not just an exercise of papal dispensation, they also sometimes had the character of a grant of a privilege. For example, the papacy might confer a degree upon a recipient to enable that person to hold an office that the canon law, or a specific institutional rule, limited to graduates. The power claimed and exercised by the papacy to confer the status of graduate to someone who had not earned it in the traditional way was never limited solely to true dispensations, but always included positive privilege as papal degrees granted for political reasons clearly illustrate.

As I walk to the gate, I have the same fear as I had 50 years ago. It is in me. It is still the same fear. (Elie Wiesel, Nobel laureate, on the fiftieth anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.)

There was, in fact, nothing metaphorical about the Germans' systematic murder of six million Jews, nothing metaphysical or literary. The Jews were terrorized, humiliated, herded, enslaved, tortured, shot, gassed and burned; then their bones were ground up, mingled with their ashes and dumped into ponds or pits. There was nothing uplifting about any of this, no saving grace, no redeeming human nobility.

What is the role of the constitutional promise of freedom of religion in late twentieth century America? As we enter the third century of life under the Constitution, the answer to this question is not clear, for the place of religion in the American polity has yet to be clearly demarcated. Consider a seemingly simple case. Mrs. Frances Quaring, a Nebraska farm housewife, believes that the Second Commandment prohibits her from having her photograph taken or from carrying or using photographs. The state of Nebraska, however, requires that applicants for a driver's license have their photographs taken and affixed to the license. The state prohibits driving without a valid driver's license. Thus, by state law Mrs. Quaring is denied that primary instrument of freedom and mobility in modern America— use of the automobile—because of her religious beliefs. Is Mrs. Quaring's mobility protected by the Constitutional guaranty of freedom of religion? The Supreme Court doesn't know. Five years ago it split four to four, and was thus unable to decide the case.

Before examining more recent developments, a historical perspective is helpful in coming to understand the emergence and evolution of liberation theology in South Africa. This perspective establishes the contrasts between the passivity of the churches - their flaccid social and political witness - during the first six decades of this century and what followed after the shootings at Sharpeville in 1960.

By the late 19th century, the white Dutch Reformed Churches (DRC) were intimately associated with the rise of Afrikaner nationalism and provided the initial institutional structure around which the volk gathered. As the 20th century unfolded, an Afrikaans language movement, the Afrikaner National Party, a secret society—the Broederbond (Brotherhood), separate volk schools, various welfare organizations and the Federation of Afrikans Cultural Organizations all helped to strengthen the white nationalist movement that was to capture the South African state in 1948. Afrikaner corporations helped to consolidate that power—SANLAM, VOLKSKAS and Federale Mynbou being pre-eminent. Afrikaner leadership was nurtured within the white trade union movement. Having gained control of the state, Afrikaners also came to dominate the civil service as well as the extensive parastatal sector of the apartheid economy. They established their ascendancy in the military and police. As Dr. Malan put it in 1938 when speaking at the centenary of the Battle of Blood River: “The Trekkers received their task from God's hand. They gave their answer. They made their sacrifices. There is still a white race. There is a new volk.” A decade later that nation had come to power.

In October 1846, the men and women of the African Methodist Episcopal Church in St. Louis (African Church) met to consider whether they would remain with the Methodist Episcopal Church (MEC) or align with the recently-formed Methodist Episcopal Church, South (MECS). Two years earlier, in 1844, amid growing conflict over the question of slavery within the national Methodist Church, its General Conference had adopted a Plan of Separation that provided for the withdrawal of the southern Methodists and the creation of their own ecclesiastical government. The Plan provided that each Border State congregation would have the right to determine for itself by a vote of the majority with which of the two churches it would affiliate.

After the southern conferences had organized the new MECS in May 1845, the trustees of the all-white Fourth Street Methodist Church (Fourth Street Church), whose quarterly conference exercised nominal authority over the African Church, informed the black congregants that they could retain their house of worship only if they voted to join the southern Methodists. Throwing caution to the wind, and putting at risk a decade-and-a-half of patient efforts to achieve formal congregational independence within the Methodist Church, the black congregants voted decisively, by a 110 to 7 margin, to remain affiliated with the Northern Conference.

Growing numbers of educators throughout the United States recognize that study about religion in social studies, literature, art, and music is an essential part of a complete public school education. States and school districts are issuing new mandates and guidelines for the inclusion of teaching about religion in the curriculum. As a result, textbooks are expanding discussions of religion's role in history and culture, and many new supplementary materials concerning religion in history are being developed.

Today, there is little debate that a paradigm shift is occurring in the field of international conflict resolution; where experts laud the effectiveness of peaceful means ending disputes compared with the use of force or violence. This paradigm shift is reflected in the increasing number of peacebuilding academic and applied programs in Eastern Europe, Latin America, Africa, South and East Asia, and the Middle East, including conflict resolution workshops, projects for building civil societies, and nonviolent resistance mobilization. In peacebuilding contexts, scholars and practitioners are seeking to integrate authentic, indigenous and local cultural methods of conflict analysis and intervention, which are replacing the generic conflict resolution applications developed by western practitioners in United States and Europe.

The distinctive contribution of Roman Catholic moral theology to public policy discourse has been to insist that it be open to conversation partners representing quite diverse religious and philosophical traditions. Thus Catholicism has what might well be considered a peculiar way of addressing “religiously” both civil rights and legislation: it dissociates the legitimation of rights and laws from specifically religious commitments. A key category in the Catholic approach is “common good,” as a normative description of social coherence; and its corollaries, including “justice” as its standard, mutual “rights” and “duties” as its constituents, and “public authority” and “law” as its guarantors. It is to the possible context and meanings of these terms that I wish to devote attention. Despite the fact that they are the focus of virtually all social theory in Catholic tradition, there is far from unanimity on their interpretation and implementation. I will focus on contemporary Catholic social thought, though I will refer briefly to some of its origins, especially in Thomas Aquinas.

Prominent authorities have called for the creation of a Code of Ethics for those engaged in legal education. The purpose of this essay is to advance the discussion by proposing a specific set of standards for consideration.

A preliminary question to be answered is why have a code of ethics for law educators?

Ethics are adopted in order to foster unique relationships created by specialized human institutions. Professional codes of ethics differ from morality and law in that they impose additional expectations upon the professional. If they did not, ethical codes would be superfluous, and professionals might simply be expected to act morally and to obey the law. As it is, the ethical demands of a profession are often foreign or contrary to generally applicable principles of morality and law.

Assuming that one agrees that professional codes of ethics are generally salutary, one might disagree about the necessity of drafting a new one for legal academicians. The American Association of University Professors Statement on Professional Ethics may be thought to suffice for defining a teacher's academic responsibilities, as may the American Bar Association Model Rules of Professional Conduct for all ethical questions encountered in the practice of law.

According to one study, between 1975 and 1995, an estimated one hundred seventy-two (172) children died after their parents rejected medical care on religious grounds. Of these children, one hundred forty (140) suffered conditions for which survival rates exceeded ninety percent, if there had been timely medical intervention; and eighteen more could have survived at a rate exceeding fifty percent. Parents belonging to five churches that practice faith or spiritual healing methods accounted for eighty-three percent of these child deaths: the Indiana-based Faith Assembly, Christian Science Church, Church of the First Born in the Western states, Faith Tabernacle of Philadelphia, and the End Time Ministry of South Dakota. This survey did not include the seventy-eight child deaths reported in Oregon from 1955-98 or the twelve deaths in Idaho between 1980-98, resulting from faith healing practices that occurred within the Oregon-based Followers of Christ Church; of the Oregon children, probably twenty-one could have lived if they had received medical treatment, according to reporters from The Oregonian.

Keown is clear that the Buddhist tradition is remarkably diverse and that his paper presents only one Buddhist perspective, one based on his interpretation of relevant passages from the Pali canon. However, there is a real danger that those readers who are perhaps not broadly read in Buddhism could be misled to think that the position presented in Keown's paper is the Buddhist view rather than a Buddhist view. In fact, he sometimes seems to slide rather far in that direction himself. He states on page two that “an accurate understanding of basic Buddhist values does generate an authentic Buddhist ethic about end-of-life decisions; [and] … suicide, assisted suicide and euthanasia are all contrary to Buddhist ethics.” This claim tends to imply that there is only one normative Buddhist view on these issues. Starting with his premise that “Buddhisms” rather than Buddhism is the more accurate way to speak, it is more likely that there are plural systems of Buddhist ethics rather than a single one, and thus there could be variable authentic Buddhist views on end-of-life issues.