Advisory Board & Team
Prof. Iain Benson, Ph.D
(Witwatersrand.), JD (Windsor), MA (Cambridge), BA
(Hons.) (Queen's)
Professor of Law, University of Notre Dame
Australia, Sydney (2016, ongoing)
Extraordinary
Professor of Law, University of the Free State,
Bloemfontein South Africa (2009, ongoing)
Born in Edinburgh, Scotland, the father of seven
children, Professor Benson is an academic, lecturer and
practising lawyer specialising in pluralism and human
rights. His particular focus is on freedoms of
association, conscience and religion, the nature of
pluralism, multi-culturalism and relationships between
law, religion and culture. He has been involved in many
of the leading cases on rights of association,
conscience and religion in Canada and abroad for two
decades. As a barrister he has appeared before all
levels of court and his work has been cited by the
Supreme Court of Canada and the Constitutional Court of
South Africa.
He was one of the drafters of the South African
Charter of Religious Rights and Freedoms (signed by all
major religions in that country in September 2010) and
remains closely involved in advancing the Charter in
that country and similar projects elsewhere. Special
Rapporteur on Law and Religion in Canada and South
Africa to the Pontifical Academy of the Social Sciences,
Vatican City ( May, 2011, pub'd in Acad. Proceedings,
2012).
Author of over 40 academic articles and book chapters, he is co-editor with Tom Angier and Mark D. Retter of The Cambridge Handbook of Natural Law and Human Rights (C.U.P., 2023) and with Barry W. Bussey, of Religion Liberty and the Jurisdictional Limits of Law (Toronto: Lexis Nexis, 2017); he authored “Subsidiarity: Ancient and Contemporary Accounts” in Nicholas Aroney and Ian Leigh (eds) Christianity and Constitutionalism (O.U.P., 2022) as well as a monograph, Living Together with Disagreement: Pluralism, the Secular and the Fair Treatment of Beliefs by Law (Ballan Australia: Connor Court, 2012). His scholarly work is referred to in many books and articles.
He teaches Legal Philosophy, Legal History, Public International Law, Law and Religion and Contemporary Legal Issues and examines and supervises at Masters and Doctoral levels. He works in English and French, dividing his time between Australia (where he now lives) and France, South Africa and Canada (in the latter two of which he has or has had appointments).
[Faculty
profile]
Professor, Departments of Government and Philosophy, University of Texas
(Austin), U.S.A.
Dr. Budziszewski is an ethical and political theorist with special interest in the natural law tradition. He is the author of many academic books, most recently Commentary on Thomas Aquinas’s Treatise on Divine Law, as well as books of broader interest, most recently How and How Not to Be Happy. He has contributed numerous articles and reviews to both scholarly and popular periodicals.
Dr. Budziszewski is particularly interested in problems that arise at the intersection of philosophy and theology, for example the problem of toleration, the nature of human personhood, and the pathologies which flow from moral self-deception -- from trying to convince ourselves that we do not know what we really do. [Faculty Profile] [Scholarly Website
Professor (emeritus,active) Faculty of Health Sciences,
Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Beer Sheva, Israel
Professor Shimon Glick was born in Brooklyn in 1932 and
received his medical training in the United States,
specializing in internal medicine and endocrinology.
He immigrated to Israel in 1974 to become a founding
member of the Faculty of Health Sciences (FOHS) at Ben
Gurion University of the Negev and head of the
Internal Medicine Department at Soroka Medical Center.
He and his colleagues instituted the practice of "early
clinical exposure," insisting that students meet
patients in their first week at medical school, even
before beginning traditional academic studies.
"The students don't just treat patients. They talk to
them and learn what it's like to be sick," he explains.
Students also take their medical or Hippocratic oath
when they begin their studies, rather than taking the
oath when they finish.
Professor Glick became chair of Israel's first Internal
Medicine Division and served as Dean of the FOHS between 1986 and 1990. During
his tenure, he played a key role in formulating the
admissions process for medical students - a process
based not only on achievements but also the candidates'
character. Professor Glick headed the Prywes Center for
Medical Education and the Jakobovits Center for Jewish
Medical Ethics, two domains that were assigned a central
role in the professional education of students in the
Faculty. He was also instrumental in the instruction on
doctor-patient communications for first year medical
students. In addition, Professor Glick has served as
ombudsman for Israel's Ministry of Health. He is widely
recognized as an expert in medical ethics, with a
particular focus on Jewish medical ethics, and is at the
forefront of the efforts to bring a Jewish perspective
to bear on the most important issues of modern
bioethics.
In 2014, in recognition of his contributions to medical
education and practice, Professor Glick received a
Lifetime Achievement Award as part of the Nefesh
B'Nefesh Bonei Zion Awards. The award recognizes
outstanding Anglo Olim - veteran and recent - who
encapsulate the spirit of modern-day Zionism by
contributing in a significant way towards the State of
Israel.
Professor Glick is blessed with 46 grandchildren and
(at last count) 77 great
grandchildren. He continues to teach at the Joyce and Irving Goldman
Medical School and the Medical School for International
Health (MSIH). [Faculty
Profile]
Dr. Mary Neal, Ph.D, LLB Honours, LLM
Senior Lecturer in Law, University of Strathclyde,
Glasgow, United Kingdom
Dr. Mary Neal researches, writes, and teaches in the fields of
Healthcare Law and Bioethics, focusing on beginning and end-of-life issues.
In 2014-15, she was Adviser to the Scottish Parliamentary Committee scrutinising
the Assisted Suicide (Scotland) Bill, and she is a current member [2018] of the British
Medical Association's Medical Ethics Committee. She has published a wide range
of academic articles and blogs on a range of topics including, most recently,
conscientious objection by healthcare professionals; the nature of 'proper
medical treatment'; the role of the emotions in end-of-life decision-making; and
the conceptual structure and content of human dignity.
Dr. Neal was a co-editor
of and contributor to the recent volume
Ethical Judgments: Re-writing Medical Law (Hart, 2017). Her
works-in-progress include articles and book chapters on conscientious objection;
the idea of 'vulnerability' in healthcare; physician-assisted suicide; and the
role of dignity in human rights discourse. Among other research activities, Dr.
Neal is currently leading two funded projects relevant to the issue of
conscientious objection in healthcare. One is a British
Academy/Leverhulme-funded project exploring conflicts between personal values
and professional expectations in pharmacy practice. The other is a
multi-disciplinary network of academics and healthcare professionals (the
'Accommodating Conscience Research Network', or 'ACoRN'), funded by the Royal
Society of Edinburgh, and beginning with a series of roundtables exploring
various aspects of conscientious objection in healthcare. Dr Neal is also a
spokesperson for the Free Conscience campaign supporting the Conscientious Objection (Medical Activities) Bill currently
before the UK Parliament.
[Faculty
Profile]
David S. Oderberg, Ph.D
Professor of Philosophy, University of Reading,
United Kingdom
David S. Oderberg is Professor of Philosophy at the
University of Reading, UK. He joined the university
after completing his doctorate at Oxford in the early
1990s. He is the author of many articles in metaphysics,
ethics, philosophy of religion, philosophy of science,
and other areas. He is also the author of several books
including Moral Theory and Applied Ethics (Blackwell,
2000) as well as co-editor of collections in ethics such
as Human Values: New Essays on Ethics and Natural Law (Palgrave,
2004) and Human Lives: New Essays on
Non-Consequentialist Bioethics (Palgrave, 1997).
Prof. Oderberg has been working on freedom of conscience in health care over the last few years, with a
recent article in the Journal of Medical Ethics on
co-operation, and a forthcoming policy monograph to be
published by the Institute of Economic Affairs. He is
also Editor of
Ratio, an international journal of
analytic philosophy, and Senior Fellow of the Higher
Education Academy. In 2013 he delivered the Hourani
Lectures in Ethics at SUNY Buffalo, and has a book
forthcoming based on those lectures, to be called The
Metaphysics of Good and Evil. He is the author of
the
Declaration in Support of Conscientious Objection in
Health Care. [Faculty
Profile] [Website]
Professor and Endowed IIIT Chair in Islamic Studies,
Department of Religious Studies,
George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia,
U.S.A.
Dr. Sachedina is an American/Canadian citizen born in Tanzania. He has studied in India, Iraq, Iran, and Canada,
and obtained
his Ph.D. from the University of Toronto.
He has been conducting research and writing in the field of Islamic Law,
Ethics, and Theology (Sunni and Shiite) for more than two decades.
In the last ten years he has concentrated on social and political ethics,
including Interfaith and Intrafaith Relations, Islamic Biomedical Ethics and
Islam and Human Rights. Dr.
Sachedina's publications include: Islamic Messianism (State University of
New York, 1980); Human Rights and the Conflicts of Culture, co-authored
(University of South Carolina, 1988); The Just Ruler in Shiite Islam
(Oxford University Press, 1988); The Prolegomena to the Qur'an (Oxford
University Press, 1998); The Islamic Roots of Democratic Pluralism
(Oxford University Press, 2002);
Islam and the Challenge of Human Rights (Oxford University Press,
September 2009), in addition to numerous articles in academic journals.
The Ministry of Culture in Tehran named Dr. Sachedina's
Islamic Biomedical Ethics: Theory and
Application (Oxford University Press, February 2009) the best book of
the year for 2010. Reviewing the book, David Novak (author of
Jewish Social Ethics) described him as "the leading Islamic thinker
writing in English today," and noted "his authentic religious commitment to
the truth of Islam, and his willingness to engage perspectives from other
traditions." [Faculty
Profile]
Senior Research Fellow, Ian Ramsey Centre for Science and Religion,
University of Oxford, United Kingdom
Prof. Roger Trigg did his undergraduate work and
doctorate, both in philosophy, at New College, Oxford.
He then taught at the University of Warwick, where he is
now Emeritus Professor. The author of many books on
central issues in philosophy, his most recent books
include Equality,
Freedom and
Religion, (Oxford University Press 2012), and
Religious
Diversity: Philosophical and Political Dimensions,
(Cambridge University Press, 2014). Arising from his
background in the philosophy of science, he has also
written: Beyond
Matter: Why Science Needs Metaphysics, Templeton
Press, 2015, in an attempt to establish rational
foundations for science, in the face of an unthinking
scientism.
In recent years, he has been particularly
concerned with the place of religion in public life, and
in particular about the role of freedom of religion, and
freedom of conscience, in contemporary society,
lecturing widely on the subject in many countries,
including Russia. He has been a member of the
Religious Freedom
Project in Georgetown University, Washington DC, and
is now Senior Research Fellow of the
Ian
Ramsey Centre for Science and Religion, Oxford, which he also
directed for a time.
He has played a leading role in learning societies,
including the
British Society for Philosophy of
Religion
(founding President 1993-6), and the
European Society
for Philosophy of Religion (President 2008-10). He
was also the founding President of the
British
Philosophical Association (2003), representing all
British philosophy
Rocco Mimmo, LLB, LLM
Chairman, Ambrose Centre for Religious Liberty,
Sydney, Australia
Mr. Mimmo is a lawyer in private practice in
Sydney, Australia. He established the Ambrose Centre
for Religious Liberty in 2006 and publicly launched the Centre in 2009 in Sydney. He has
been involved in social action throughout his adult life. In conjunction with
others, he has attempted to influence the thrust of legislation adversely
affecting the essential values associated around embryonic stem cell research,
life, marriage and family. He has a Masters in International Law and has played
a leading role in human rights debates. He is an Honorary Fellow of Campion
College in Sydney which is the only Liberal Arts Tertiary Institution in
Australia. [Ambrose
Centre for Religious Liberty]
Sean Murphy,
Powell River, British Columbia, Canada
Sean Murphy has been convinced of the need
for protection of conscience legislation since 1988. He has raised the issue with
the Canadian federal government, as well as political parties and the provincial
government in British Columbia.