Coming Events
RUSSLR Visiting Scholar
Dr Vanja-Ivan Savic, Senior Lecturer in Law, University of Zagreb, Croatia, will present 'What to Expect from Laws in Complex Religious and Ethnic Societies?: Insight into Bosnia and Lebanon' on 18 February at 1pm in Room 110.
RUSSLR 2012 Law and Religion Oration
The Doctrine of Discovery in Australia and the United States By Professor Robert J. Miller
Synopsis: England explored and colonised the United States, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada under the authority of an international law called the Doctrine of Discovery. Europeans justified their sovereign and property claims over Indigenous Peoples and their lands all around the world with the Discovery Doctrine.
This legal principle was rationalised by religious and ethnocentric ideas of European and Christian superiority over the other cultures, religions, and races of the world. The Doctrine provided that newly-arrived Europeans automatically acquired property rights in the lands of Indigenous Peoples and gained political and commercial rights over the Indigenous inhabitants. The United States Supreme Court expressly adopted Discovery in 1823 in the case of Johnson v. M'Intosh and American, Australian, Canadian, and New Zealand governments and courts have cited and relied on that case and Discovery to try to control Indigenous Peoples.
Australia and the United States did not apply the elements of Discovery in the exact same manner or at the exact same time periods; but the similarities of their use of Discovery are striking and not the least bit surprising since the Doctrine was English colonial law. Viewing Australian and American history and law in light of the Doctrine of Discovery helps to expand the knowledge and understanding of both countries and their attempts to colonise Indigenous Peoples.
Robert J. Milleris a professor at Lewis & Clark Law School in Portland, Oregon, USA. He is the Chief Justice for the Grand Ronde Tribe's Court of Appeals, and a citizen of the Eastern Shawnee Tribe of Oklahoma. Publications include, Discovering Indigenous Lands: The Doctrine of Discovery in the English Colonies, (co-authored with Indigenous professors from Australia, New Zealand, and Canada) (Oxford University Press, 2010).
When: Wednesday, 29 October at 6.00pm
Where: Moot Court Room, Ligertwood Building, North Tce
RUSSLR to Co-Host Roundtable on Law and Religion Scholarship and Teaching in Australia
RUSSLR and the ANU College of Law are co-hosting a one-day Roundtable on Law and Religion in Australia to be held in Canberra on Friday, 22 June 2012. Professor Brett G. Scharffs, Francis R. Kirkham Professor of Law, Brigham Young University Law School, and Associate Director of the International Centre for Law and Religion Studies, will launch the Roundtable on the evening of Thursday, 21 June with a public lecture.
The purpose of the event is to gather together the foremost law and religion teachers and scholars in Australia with a view to generating discussion on current issues, recent developments, opportunities for collaboration and current projects involving research and teaching.
For further information, download the conference flyer.
RUSSLR 2011 Law and Religion Oration: Rights, Resistance and Revolution Protestant Contributions to Western Rights Talk by Professor John Witte, Jr.
Western rights talk was not born of the Enlightenment, but rooted in more than a millennium of earlier Jewish, Classical and Christian sources. This lecture explores the vital contribution of early modern Protestants who wove these earlier teachings into a theory of fundamental inalienable rights whose breach by a tyrant was cause for revolution. By 1650, European Protestants had already defined, defended, and died for every one of these rights that would appear a century and a half later in the U.S. Bill of Rights and other early democratic constitutions. This lecture tells that story, and its implications for a new theory and history of rights.
Speaker: John Witte, Jr is Jonas Robitscher Professor of Law, Alonzo L. McDonald Distinguished Professor, and Director of the Center for the Study of Law and Religion Center at Emory University. A specialist in legal history, marriage law, and religious liberty, he has published 180 articles, 13 journal symposia, and 24 books. Recent book titles include: Sex, Marriage and Family Life in John Calvin’s Geneva. (2005); Modern Christian Teachings on Law, Politics, and Human Nature, 3 vols. (2006); God’s Joust, God’s Justice: Law and Religion in the Western Tradition (2006); The Reformation of Rights: Law, Religion, and Human Rights in Early Modern Calvinism (2007); Christianity and Law: An Introduction (2008); Sins of the Fathers: The Law and Theology of Illegitimacy Reconsidered (2009); Christianity and Human Rights: An Introduction (2010); and Religion and the American Constitutional Experiment (3d ed. 2011). Professor Witte’s writings have appeared in ten languages, and he has lectured and convened conferences through North America, Western and Eastern Europe, Japan, Israel, and South Africa. With major funding from the Pew, Ford, Lilly, Luce, and McDonald foundations, he has directed 12 major international projects on democracy, human rights, and religious liberty, and on marriage, family, and children. These projects have collectively yielded more than 160 new volumes and 250 public forums around the world. He edits two major book series, “Studies in Law and Religion,” and “Religion, Marriage and Family.” He has been selected ten times by the Emory law students as the Most Outstanding Professor and has won dozens of other awards and prizes for his teaching and research.
When: Wednesday, 20 July at 5.30pm
Where: Moot Court Room, Ligertwood Building, North Tce
RSVP: Peter Burdon peter.d.burdon@adelaide.edu.au
Public Lecture: The Royals Do It - Should We? Marriage in the Modern World
The idea of covenant marriage has begun to emerge in various Western countries as an antidote, if not answer, to the rise of “easy-in/easy out” contract marriage. This lecture explores the biblical foundations for the idea of marriage as a covenant, and uses that material to build a new marital theory that balances traditional ideals of responsible marriage and parenthood with new constitutional norms of sexual liberty and domestic autonomy.
Speaker: John Witte, Jr is Jonas Robitscher Professor of Law, Alonzo L. McDonald Distinguished Professor, and Director of the Center for the Study of Law and Religion Center at Emory University. A specialist in legal history, marriage law, and religious liberty, he has published 180 articles, 13 journal symposia, and 24 books. Professor Witte’s writings have appeared in ten languages, and he has lectured and convened conferences through North America, Western and Eastern Europe, Japan, Israel, and South Africa. With major funding from the Pew, Ford, Lilly, Luce, and McDonald foundations, he has directed 12 major international projects on democracy, human rights, and religious liberty, and on marriage, family, and children. These projects have collectively yielded more than 160 new volumes and 250 public forums around the world. He edits two major book series, “Studies in Law and Religion,” and “Religion, Marriage and Family.” He has been selected ten times by the Emory law students as the Most Outstanding Professor and has won dozens of other awards and prizes for his teaching and research.
When: Thursday, 21 July at 5.30pm
Where: St Mark’s College Ballroom 46 Pennington Terrace North Adelaide, SA 5006
Information: Reverend Mark Sibly snrpriest@stpeters-cathedral.org.au
Book Launch: Issues at the Borders of Life
Edited by Bernadette Richards and Vic Pfitzner
Published by ATF Press
When: Wednesday, 15 June 2011 at 5.30pm
Where: University of Adelaide, Ligertwood Building (Law School), Moot Court Room
The book will be launched by Professor Robert Crotty, Director of ECSA For further information, please see the attached flier.
‘Much Ado About a Nose Stud: Some Reflections on the Power of Leitmotivs in Constitutional Interpretation’
This paper examines a recent judgment of the South African Constitutional Court dealing with the request of a Hindu schoolgirl to be given permission to wear a nose stud with her school uniform, claiming that wearing the stud was an expression of her religious and cultural beliefs. In its judgment, the court develops what may be referred to as "a jurisprudence of difference", not merely requiring toleration of diversity, but its celebration. The paper argues that this jurisprudence emanates from memorial constitutionalism, one of three leitmotivs that have recurred in constitutional interpretation in South Africa since the advent of constitutional democracy on 27 April 1994.
Speaker: Lourens M. du Plessis is Professor of Public Law at the University of Stellenbosch, South Africa. He is a legal philosopher who, in his research, specialises in issues of statutory and constitutional interpretation. He is the author of various books, chapters, research articles and articles in the popular press. He often presents papers at national and international conferences. He has a keen interest in topical issues and in particular in matters pertaining to the political situation in South Africa. In July 1987 he was part of the group of South Africans (the so-called “Dakar Safari”) who, on a study tour of West Africa, held exploratory talks with members of the then banned African National Congress (ANC). During 1993 he was actively involved in the Multi-party Negotiating Process at the World Trade Centre, Kempton Park, chairing the Technical Committee on Fundamental Rights during the Transition. This Committee drafted South Africa’s first Bill of Rights. He was also vice-chair and at present is a member of the Board of Directors of the Institute for Justice and Reconciliation.
When: Tuesday, 11 January 2011 at 1.00pm
Where: Room 110, Ligertwood Building, Law School
Law and Religion in Traditional and Contemporary China
RUSSLR and The Asian Studies Association of Australia will host a presentation on the nature of law and religion in traditional and contemporary China and explore how far the interactions between law and religion are different in the traditional and contemporary ages in China. It will look into the factors that may explain the similarities or contribute to the dissimilarities.
Speaker: Associate Professor Benny Tai Yiu Ting, University of Hong Kong.
Benny Y. T. Tai, Associate Professor, specializes in constitutional law, administrative law, law & governance, law & politics and law & religion. He has been an Associate Dean of the Faculty of Law between 2000 and 2008.
His major publications include: “The advent of substantive legitimate expectations in Hong Kong: two competing visions” (2002) Public Law 688-702; “Chapter One of Hong Kong’s New Constitution: Constitutional Positioning and Repositioning,” in Ming Chan and Alvin Y. So (ed.) Crisis and Transformation of China's Hong Kong (M.E. Sharpe, 2002); “One Principle...Two Principles...3,4,5,6,7,8,9 Factors for Constitutional Reform,” in Johannes Chan and Lison Harris (eds.), Hong Kong's Constitutional Debate, 2005, (Hong Kong: Hong Kong Law Journal Limited, 2005), pp15-28; “Developing an Index of the Rule of Law: Sharing the Experience of Hong Kong” (2007) 2 Asian Journal of Comparative Law89-109; “Basic Law, Basic Politics: The Constitutional Game of Hong Kong” (2007) 37 HKLJ 503-578; “An Unexpected Chapter Two of Hong Kong’s Constitution: New Players and New Strategies” in Ming Sing (ed.) Politics and Government in Hong Kong: Crisis under Chinese Sovereignty (Routledge, 2008); “Religious Faith, Language Games and Public Discourse” in Kang, Yeung and Leung (eds.), Religious Values and the Public Forum: Public Religion, an East-West Dialogue, (Beijing: China Social Sciences Press, 2008).
His current research projects include “The Rule of Law and Legal Culture,” “Political Legitimacy and the Development of Constitutionalism,” “Law in Governance Processes,” “Law and Deliberation,” and “Law and Religion: A Comparative Study”.
In 1997, he was awarded University Teaching Fellow by the University of Hong Kong. In 2002, he was awarded a Certificate of Merit in the IT in Education Awards Contest conducted by the Academic Council for IT in Education, University of Hong Kong. Benny is very active in promoting civic education in the community. He has been the member of the Committee on the Promotion of Civil Education, Hong Kong Government for eight years (1995-2003). He has also served on many government/public bodies including the Consultative Committee for the Basic Law of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (1988-90), the Bilingual Laws Advisory Committee (1995-2003) and part-time member of the Central Policy Unit, Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Government (2007).
Chair: Dr Paul Babie, Director, Research Unit for the Study of Society, Law and Religion.
Date: 6 July 2010
Time: 2.00pm-3.30pm
Venue: University of Adelaide, Ligertwood Building (Law School), Lecture Theatre 1
'Do Burqas Bite? National and International Perspectives on Bans of Religious Dress'
The University of Adelaide Research Unit for the Study of Society, Law and Religion (RUSSLR) and the South Australian Chapter of the Australian Association of Constitutional Law invite you to a seminar: 'Do Burqas Bite? National and International Perspectives on Bans of Religious Dress'
Date: 20 July
Time: 5.30-7.00pm
Venue: University of Adelaide Law School, Moot Court Room
‘The Freedom of Religion in Emerging Democracies/Market Economies: The Case of Ukraine’
Presented by: The Flinders University School of Theology and the University of Adelaide Research Unit for the Study of Society, Law and Religion
When: Friday, 30 July 2010 at 2.30-4.00pm
Where: Adelaide College of Divinity Campus, 34 Lipsett Terrace, Brooklyn Park, Room S1
Speaker: Fr Borys Gudziak, BSc (Syracuse), STB (Urbaniana), PhD (Harvard), LSEO (Pontifical Oriental Institute), Rector, Ukrainian Catholic University, Lviv, Ukraine. In 1992, Fr Borys founded Lviv's Institute of Church History and restored the Lviv Theological Academy. In 1993 he was named head of the Commission for the Revival of the Lviv Theological Academy, serving from 1995-2000 as Vice-Rector for Academic Affairs and from 2000 as its second Rector. In 2002 he was named the first Rector of the newly inaugurated Ukrainian Catholic University. From 1995 to 2001 he was Project Coordinator for the Ukrainian team of ‘Aufbruck’, which conducted a ten nation comparative study of the effects of totalitarianism on the Catholic Church in the societies of Central and Eastern Europe. A leading intellectual and historian of post-Soviet Ukraine, in 2000 Fr Borys was awarded the Galician (western Ukrainian) knighthood as the year's outstanding figure in education.
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