Published on
21 August 2006
At the age of fifty-six – thirteen months after his resignation as Lord Chancellor of England, ten months before his arrest, and two years before his death – Thomas More wrote the epitaph for his tomb, had it engraved in stone, and sent a written copy to Erasmus for publication. More explained this odd action […]
Published on
14 June 2006
Formerly, when religion was strong and science weak, men mistook magic for medicine; now, when science is strong and religion weak, men mistake medicine for magic. Thomas Szasz (1973:115) 1. Introduction: No less a figure than Francis Fukuyama recently labelled Transhumanism as ‘the world’s most dangerous idea’. Such an eye-catching condemnation almost certainly denotes an […]
Published on
30 May 2006
I must say I gave this title partly to shock people. Famously, just before he became Pope, Cardinal Ratzinger spoke out against moral relativism, and just this last week in Poland the Pope has again spoken out against relativism. What he means by this, I take it, is that we should reject ethical views that […]
Published on
25 January 2006
From the outset, I would like to give you a sense of what this issue is about and why it arises the way it does before moving on to talk about the larger and more conceptually oriented issues. Many of you probably know that the United States constitution is founded on the separation of the […]
Published on
11 January 2006
When I applied for the post of Director of the Centre for the Study of Human Rights I was asked a question right at the start of my interview by a distinguished Oxford professor who was acting as external adviser. Given that I was an extreme opponent of Human Rights law, why I had I thought I […]
Published on
7 December 2005
It is my great pleasure and honour to be invited, by the Thomas More Institute, to share with you our experience in rebuilding justice and reconciliation after the genocide of 1994 in Rwanda. Rwanda’s history was characterized by a highly centralised and autocratic system of government that institutionalised ethnic differences. This culminated in the 1994 […]
Published on
9 November 2005
May I say that I am pleased to see here a number of our colleagues from China. I have been visiting China since the year 2000 when I went as a member of the Foreign Secretary’s Death Penalty Panel. I have noticed some remarkable changes in attitudes and in openness of discussion on the subject […]