Iain Tyrrell Benson (born 1955 in Edinburgh, Scotland) is a legal philosopher, author, professor, and practice legal counsel. The main focus of his work in relation to law and society is to examine some of the various meanings underlying common but confusing usage. His work towards an understanding of secular secularism and secularism has been cited by the Supreme Court of Canada and the South African Constitutional Court. He has also provided a critical study of the terms pluralism faith , believers , infidels , liberalism and accommodation and examines the implications for various legal and non-legal uses.
Benson is a member of the draft committee of the South African Charter of Rights and Freedom, a document that establishes core aspects of citizenship and the rights and freedoms of religion and conscience in constitutional democracy. He has also made a significant contribution to the understanding of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedom and freedom of religion under Canadian law. He was detained by the Government of Canada to write material on Religions and Public Policy as aspects of the Federal Multi-Cultural Policy and is an ongoing expert advisor to South Africa. i> Promotion Council on Religious Freedom .
An advocate that public space should be open and inclusive of all citizens and their groups, whether their faith and faith commitments are based on non-religious or religious beliefs, Iain Benson is the first Executive Director of the Center for Culture, Partisan, non-denominational charitable foundations with status in Canada and the United States, dedicated to examining the nature of pluralism with particular reference to the dimensions of religious associational rights and expression. In 2010 he was appointed as one of the ten directors of the inauguration of the Global Center for Pluralism together with Kofi Annan and Adrienne Clarkson and chaired by His Excellency Aga Khan IV. He was also invited by the rapporteur on Religious Law and Diversity in Canada and South Africa to the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences in Vatican City in May 2011 and was appointed expert advisor to the African Council South for the Protection and Promotion of Rights and Religious Freedom in September of the same year.
In his capacity as a lawyer and human rights lawyer, Benson has written and taught extensively in the fields of ethics, virtue and pluralism, and acts as an adviser in the fields of medical ethics and bioethics in Canada, Saudi Arabia, Eastern Europe, South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand.
Some of Benson's writings have appeared or translated in French, Italian, German, African, Flemish, and Spanish.
Video Iain Benson
Biography
Iain Benson is the eldest of three children born to Kenneth and Margaret (nÃÆ' Â © e Scott) Benson, and grew up primarily in Victoria, BC. His family moved from Edinburgh to Quesnel, British Columbia, and then to Prince George, BC, where Kenneth Benson worked as a Medical Health Officer and was later appointed Deputy Health Minister for the British Columbia government.
Benson attended Oak Bay Senior Secondary School (1974) and obtained degrees from Queen's University, Ontario (University of Windsor, Ontario (Law JD 1984), St. Catharine's College, Cambridge, UK (MA1987 Act) The University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa (Law, PhD. 2013) with a thesis entitled: "Reconciliation Framework for Reconciliation of Competing Rights of Competitors Involving Religious Freedom" (Counselor: Prof. Iain Currie). Several articles published by many colleagues, book chapters and a short book, are available on-line at the Social Science Research Network
In 1984 he worked as a summer research assistant based at Oxford University, England and called the following year to the British Columbia bar. Benson is training with the company Alexander Holburn Beaudin & amp; Laing before becoming a lawyer in 1987 with British Columbia Industrial Relations Council (BCIRC). In 1989 he was appointed Senior Lawyer for the Council and put into practice there through organizational development into the British Columbia Employment Relations Relationship. He was appointed senior researcher for the Cultural Renewal Center in 1994, and in 2000 became the first Executive Director of the center.
In 2008 Benson was invited to become the first non-national research partner for the South African Institute for the Constitution, Human Rights, Public and International Law (SAIFAC). The following year he was appointed Professor of Extraordinary Law at the Department of Constitutional and Philosophical Law at University of Free State, South Africa, becoming senior researcher for the Chester Ronning Center for the Study of Religion and Public Life at the University of Alberta and took a position as Senior Associate Counsel at Canadian Law Firm, Miller Thomson.
In 2010 Benson was appointed to the executive committee of the Global Center Board Foundation for Pluralism in Ottawa and a Member of the Upper Legal Society of Canada. In 2011 he was accepted as a Member of the International Constitutional Law Association at the ICAL meeting in Mexico and in 2013 became Member of the Consortium of International Law and Religious Scholar ICLARS, Milan Italy; He is a Senior Associate Fellow, International Institute for Hermeneutics, Albert-Ludwigs-Univ., Freiburg, Germany 2015, is underway; Research Associate, Religious Freedom and Business Foundation, Maryland, USA (2014, continuing); senior researcher, Canadian Center for The Responsibility to Protect (R2P), Munk Center, Trinity University, Univ. Toronto (2014, in progress); Editorial Advisor, Canadian Race Relations Inst. (2015, ongoing) and Member of the African Legal and Religious Consortium ACLARS in Namibia 2015. In July 2015 he was invited to become an academic advisor for the Open University project in Jurisprudence, England; in January 2014 he was Visiting Professor, Faculty of Law, University of Western Ontario, Canada where he taught courses in Comparative Laws of the Constitution. For the term 2014-2015 he is Visiting Scholar, Massey College, University of Toronto, Canada and since January 2016 takes a position as Professor of Law at the School of Law, The University of Notre Dame, Sydney, Australia where he teaches International Public Law and Problems Contemporary Law.
Maps Iain Benson
Activity
Benson performs written and research work, international lectures, government and private consultations, court appearances before all levels of courts in Canada, media interviews and invites academics and colloquia and governmental panels, in various fields.
At the beginning of the twentieth century it was one of two non-nationals in the Advanced Committee that drafted the South African Charter of Rights and Freedoms under Section 234 of the country's constitution, and was designated for the signing ceremony public in Johannesburg in October 2010. Early that same year, Iain Benson delivered a major paper on religious inclusiveness in Canada to the Canadian Embassy for the Holy See, and addressed the issue of religious accommodation in the public spaces to the Culture and Language Center at Africa.
Benson works in the field of ethics and constitutional law through his involvement with the South Africa Institute for Advanced Constitution, Human Rights, Public and International Law, The Chester Ronning Center in Alberta, Canada and as Extraordinary Professor at Faculty of Law, Department of Constitutional Law and Philosophy of Law at University of Free Country. In 2008 he was a panel respondent who was invited to Dr Margaret Somerville of the Keynote Address at the Congress of Humanity and Social Sciences of Canada and in 2009 was handled American Political Science Association organized by the American Public Philosophy Institute with lectures entitled "Standing Freedom on the Head:" Equality "and" Non-Discrimination "and the Suppression of Democratic Freedom: Law, Freedom and Convergence".
In November 2007 Benson was invited to submit a proposal to the Canadian Government's Policy Research Initiative on "Religion and Public Policy" . He wrote a "think-piece" background on religion and public policy in Canada titled "Taking a Fresh View of Religion and Public Policy in Canada: Need for Paradigm Shift" . He has also appeared to several Canadian government agencies, including the Royal Commission on Reproductive and Reproductive Technology and the Law Reform Commission established to examine abortion. He appeared before the Senate Special Committee on Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide Senate Committees at Banking and Finance (Re: Pension Reform) and many Committees of the House of Commons of Canada.
Benson has been interviewed on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation program including "Ideas", "Tapestry", "Cross Country Checks" and "Comments". She has been interviewed on Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Vatican Radio, Reuters and various radio stations in the UK and South Africa. Benson has acted as an external reader of the manuscript for various pressures and journals including McGill-Queen's University Press (Montreal), University of Toronto Press (Toronto), Queen's Law Journal (Kingston, Ontario), The Journal of Religion, State and Society (Routledge, UK) and South African Journal of Human Rights , Acta Theologica (South Africa).
Benson continues to teach in Canada, the United States, Europe, Saudi Arabia and South Africa, giving papers on topics ranging from, constitutional and religious law, literature, secularism, secularism, pluralism and ethics- and accommodation of different beliefs.
Philosophy of law and political theory
Benson has published works on accommodation of religious and non-religious rights, and has worked to promote the idea of ​​a common public good that serves the common good in all faith communities. His public opinion is that all citizens have beliefs and beliefs on something, whether these beliefs are based on religion or not, and that public space must act in balance.
"Benson's Record of Definition (Re) of 'Secular'" is quoted by the Supreme Court of Canada (in its decision in 2002 Chamberlain ). This case concerns whether books on same-sex-cared families should be approved at the Kindergarten level. In their decision to refer the matter back to a non-discriminatory decision, the court said that B.C. The school's insistence on the Act on secularism and non-discrimination lies at the heart of the case. It states that "[a] will the Provincial schools and schools be conducted with secular and non-sectarian principles". It also emphasizes that "[t] the highest morality must be inculcated, but no dogmas or religious beliefs should be taught in the school or school of the Province" . The decision cites Benson's article in light of the precise understanding of the "secular" and "non-sectarian" concepts, and says it is a mistake to equate "secular" with "non-religious". In the next article, Benson has been critical of the adoption of "secularism" by the court because the matter is never debated before them and is not essential to the interpretation of the law in their presence. This work was cited with the approval of Judge Albie Sachs in a 2005 decision of the South African Constitutional Court in the decision of Fourie .
Benson also criticized the failure to examine the meaning of "secularism" in the works of most commentators on "secular" and "secularism" itself, including the work of Charles Taylor. He has been critical of the tendency to assume that "secularism" is a neutral concept, when the origin of the term is within a framework that is explicitly intended to minimize the public's relevance to religion.
Benson argues that Canada's approach to plural society often ignores the important role that religion plays in the public sphere and also in the lives of its citizens and groups. He argues that secularism is not neutral about religion, and that the terms understood by most people do not belong to "public space" as a key component of many citizens' identity, which is their freedom of conscience and religion. Benson further argues that a better understanding of the term "secular" will make religion and state separate jurisdictions while enabling cooperation and mutual understanding between them. The ultimate goal of this preferred philosophy is to create a society in which individual and communal differences are accepted and embraced not in which law and politics are seen as building toward a forced "agreement" or "convergence". A think-piece paper for the Canadian Government's Research Initiative Research Group on "The Religion and Public Policy" (January 2008) is an elaboration of some of his thoughts on the subject and highlighted the need a paradigm shift in how we approach religion and public policy. It also outlines some of the implications that must be had for government action in relation to multiculturalism in the public sphere, and legal decisions in relation to religious freedom and the principles of accommodation.
Recently he has begun to examine the tendency of legal decisions to remove from the consideration of the communal dimension of religious rights, and has written about the associational dimension of religious freedom and its importance to diversity, freedom and plural society;
Professor Benson's academic writings are mentioned in many books and scientific articles and he is often called to review academic texts, articles. He has examined his bachelor degree (MTh and DTheol. Degree to date).
Other engagements and interests
Iain Benson is a published poet. He is also the editor of Volume VII of the Collected Works of G.K. Chesterton , contributed a critical introduction and several hundred footnotes for the Chesterton Manalive, The Ball and Crusade novels and The Flying Inn . In 2001 Benson spoke to Oxford University, C.S. Lewis society, and became Knight of Magisterial Grace of Sovereign Military Order of Malta . She has been in Canada Who's Who since 2011.
Publications
Benson remains a prolific writer in various subjects. Selected selected publications include
- Living Together with Disputes: Pluralism, Secularism, and Fair Justice Treatment in Canada Today
- Considering Secularism
- Notes Towards Definition (Re) from 'Secular'
- Observing Religion and Public Policy in Canada: Need for Paradigm Shift
- The Case of Religious Inclusivism and the Judicial Recognition of Human Rights: Response to Lenta
- Unexamined Faiths and Common Place of Religion: The Emergence of Insights from the Law
- Freedom of Conscience and Religion in Canada: Challenges and Opportunities
- The Jurisdiction of Science: What the Evolution/Creative Debate Is Not About
- Is Canada Moving Toward or Away from the Inclusiveness of Religion in the Public Spaces?
- Doctors and Marital Commissioners: Accommodations of Differing Beliefs in a Free and Democratic Society
- What Is 'Value' Means Anything? Implications for Law, Education, and Society
- Works Collected from G.K. Chesterton Volume VII (ed)
References
External links
- The Global Center for Pluralism
- The South African Institute for the Constitution, Public, Human Rights and Advanced International Law
- Chester Ronning Center for Religious Studies and Public Life
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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