 In de laatste 1980's was ik geïnvraagd in, met wat fellow South Afrikaans, in meting met die mensen die in exil in die tijd were, member van die liberale voorses, om die politieke futuur van South Afrika te talen. En we hadden meting in Washington D.C. En at die tijd was ik ook geïnvraagd in translating en legale philosophieke werk van een verhaagde Dutch-legale filosofa Hermann Dweerwier. En so ik geïnvraagd John Witty en zei, I'm coming to the United States, I have some time, if it makes any sense to you, then I could come down to Emery en we can talk about the translation. En so John invited me down. En at that time at Emery there was a professor Bergenthold, who is now a judge in the International Court of Justice, whom I'd known from human rights circles. And during my visit he invited me to spend a semester at Emery to do some teaching here. Professor Bergenthold then resigned from Emery and Emery then asked me to come for an entire year in order to take his classes while they find an appropriate replacement. And then at the end of that session, Emery offered me what they called an ongoing relationship, which means that I come here every second year to teach international human rights and giving them further opportunities of finding a proper replacement for Professor Bergenthold. But then finally in 1995 they offered me his position and offered me the IT Co-in Chair of International Law and Human Rights and so I decided to accept that and so came permanently to Emery in 1995. Well I was part of it right from the outset. The very first major conference was on Christianity and Democracy and that was shortly after my visit that I spoke of before so John Witty invited me to be part of that exercise. So I was part of that particular conference and after that was involved in all the major conferences and ventures of the Centre for the Study of Law and Religion except for one. The 1991 conference on Christianity and Democracy was an extremely outstanding event. There were so many participants from all over the world and the quality of the presentations were so so good that it really stimulated me tremendously and made me tremendously proud to have been part of that project. From it emanated some publications and one can always look back at one of the great great beginnings of John Witty's association with the Centre and I think that put his name on the map because what attributes to the success of John Witty is that he produced the goods. I think after that conference whenever John Witty wanted to organise something and had his mind set on some project he would get the money for it because of his tremendous organisational skills and the great success with which he carries out these different projects. Let me begin by saying that the Centre for the Study of Law and Religion is in my opinion the very best of it's kind in the whole world. I've travelled quite a bit. I've gotten engaged in other exercises in this field of law and religion and wherever I travel people know about the work of the Centre. So it is well marketed but particularly strikes people for the quality of the work that emerges from the Centre. That was from day one, from that very first conference we had on Christianity and Democracy. So the impact the Centre for the Study of Law and Religion has on the image of Emory is just throughout the world outstanding and so I think that we owe a very great debt to John Witty and the Centre and other people involved in the Centre for putting Emory on the map and making it a household name in many parts of the world largely through the activity of the Centre. In Afrika, I always took a particular interest in the state claiming for itself an authority to try to impose certain religious scruples on the entire community and that I found in conflict with basic calvinistic principles known as the doctrine of sphere sovereignty which basically says let the state mind it's own business and the church will mind it's let the one not step into the field of the other and this I found a valuable formula for thinking about church state relations it's not quite separation of church and state because from that perspective I don't think that church and state can be separated I think there's a strong symbiosis between law and religion and coming to Emory in a new environment, in a new setting with a new legal system different constitutional values I had to rethink quite a bit of my own critical perceptions that I had of the South African situation and try to apply that to the United States also becoming somewhat critical of the relationship between church and state in the United States which I also think is not quite the ideal situation and particularly also believing that a constitution is probably the most unexportable commodity that any country has and when communism was abandoned in Eastern Europe and again through my work with the center I was exposed to that experience it struck me that there was almost an urgency to imitate the American system of church state relations and that caused reaction in Eastern Europe I don't think it was properly suited for that part of the world with a different history and a different culture and so the reaction that one experienced in Eastern Europe against the strict separation of church and state the excessive freedom I always thought was just trying to impose too much freedom too quickly and so I have been critical of America trying to impose its perceptions of state church relations on the rest of the world or the rest of the world just wanting voluntarily to imitate that because I think that the way that you regulate these matters are deeply embedded in one's culture and traditions and the cultures and traditions of different countries are different I think if we look at the future in the field of law, religion, church, state there are several problems that are going to be with us for many years to come if you look at international instruments on freedom of religion or belief you will find the problems that emerge from the principle of the right to change one's religion or belief there are many of the mainstream religions in the world including Islam including orthodoxy even Roman Catholicism to some extent and other religions that do not believe that one has the right to change your religion or belief and while that is a principle enunciated in international instruments but not upheld in practice that is a problem that one would have to look at much more closely the second problem that I think is going to require quite a bit of attention is the relationship between church and state I think the final word has not yet been spoken at least on the international level because there are still too many countries left in the world where the separation of church and state or sphere sovereignty of church and state is not fully appreciated and where the state would claim for itself the right to impose a religion on an entire community or even religions wishing the state to do that and if you have a religious minority in any such country they are being marginalised and discriminated against and so this is a problem of which we haven't even remotely seen the end of the solution in the future we will have to pay much more attention to looking at this and the third that I might mention is what is known as the right to self-determination of religious minorities in different societies which is a basic principle of international law but is also not upheld in all the countries of the world even in many countries of the world and I think this might be the first next project that the centre for the study of law and religion might want to tackle which is very imminent so to put it in a nutshell there are so many problems left in the field of law and religion church and state that this centre still has a long long way to go ahead of it and many new ventures that are begging to be further explored so far all the projects that the centre has undertaken has been done with such great significance and involving so many people from all over the world and so that if you were to ask me who would be best equipped to tackle any of these projects in the future I would without any hesitation say the centre for the study of law and religion it is in my opinion the best of its kind in the whole world it is the best equipped to do that and it has the leadership to achieve positive results academically and otherwise we are talking about these problems on the academic level but one also hopes that through doing that something of it will filter through into actual practice and I might also say that through my experience working with the centre I've always been surprised how people with the most divergent religious views if they come to the point of conversation find how much we have in common I think that we are inclined to emphasise the differences between this or that religious perceptions but there is so much in common that we can build upon in order to create good relations and in order to explore the solution to these problems in much deeper depth Before I came to Emory I never met Professor Hal Berman I shouldn't admit this but I didn't know his existence to be frank When I met him at Emory it was just admiration from day one the energy that emerges from him and what he has meant for the reputation of Emory University because he in his own right is a world famous figure and it is a great asset for Emory to have such a person upon our faculty and over the years I came to work closer and closer with him so that he and I are now co-directors of the world law institute of Emory University planning a very very big conference for next month and it was such a great pleasure to work with him and doing that to learn of his tremendous insights and evaluation of religious values he is a man that is personally deeply religious the example that he sets is inspiring to others and this is through his personal life and not only through his academic work his academic work is outstanding it is amazing that a man of his age can still be so tremendously productive I've also sat in some of his lectures he from time to time asked me to lecture to his students and just seeing the admiration that the students have for this great man and what he can convey to them through his world knowledge his experience his insights but also his humility as a deeply deeply religious Christian and so I found him a great great inspiration and again I want to emphasise working with him as co-director of the world law institute of Emory University is one of the greatest privileges that I can imagine any person could have had few years ago I became marginally involved with efforts of a group of Christians in China to try to persuade their government to adopt a law on religious freedom the background to this was that the China had just signed not yet ratified but signed the international covenant on civil and political rights so these groups of young Chinese believers thought that this was an appropriate time to convince the Chinese government to adopt a law on religious freedom and so they came to Baltimore and met with some people from the United States and I was included in that particular gathering I also had to make a presentation and by the way my presentation the essence of it was if you want to sell a law on religious freedom to the Chinese government don't follow the American model because that would be too much freedom too soon if you come from a background where the state controls religion and you suddenly want to take every bit of control away from that government then they're not going to accept your proposals and at the time I propose to them to look at a new law on religious freedom of Poland which guarantees lots of freedom a great deal of autonomy for religious institutions but still under some state control and that is kind of the first step to forge a regime of freedom of religion or belief now I no longer engage in that particular venture but that has provoked in me an interest in what is happening in China and I think that is a world that is vacant for the centre for the study of law and religion to go into to make contact with this group and other groups and to try to expand the whole problem and interest in the law and religion in that particular community and I mentioned this former involvement with the Chinese people just to show that there are people in China who would really appreciate tremendously some initiative of the centre in their part of the world and addressing the kind of problems which they confront in looking at state control state repression even of religious freedom I think an institute like the centre for the study of law and religion begins their exercise through academic discourse because we are an academic institution and are primarily interested in the academic side of law and religion, church and state but by talking about that studying, holding conferences and publishing a message goes out and this message impacts on the lives of people so even though you might say we want to remain academic that's not possible because if you are truly academic and if you are truly doing your work well as the centre has been doing so far then it really has a practical impact on the lives and on the institutions of the communities where they work and which they study so from academic interest to practical implementation to influence upon the hearts and minds of people is not worlds apart that is very closely related given my South African background I've always been inclined to be excessively critical of the establishment and I think in South Africa for good reason when I came to the United States I also found much that can be criticised also in the field of church state relations I don't think that the United States Supreme Court has found a clear answer to the relationship between law and religion, church and state and this is borne out by the fact that almost every new appointee to the US Supreme Court uses the very first opportunity that they get to rewrite the principle to put a different nuance on the principle that should govern law and religion church and state within the United States and I think that is so because the present system proceeds on the false premise that law and religion can be separated which I think is a false premise and if you start on the false premise then you end up with all kinds of anomalies contradictions which the next US Supreme Court judge tries to remedy by rewriting the court versus lemon test of state church relationships and so this is a wonderful field of study for the United States this system or the idea of separation of church and state has been applied to good ends but I think sometimes also in a way that is subject to criticism and this is something that again coming to the United States opened a whole new field of inquiry to me and to my own inquisitive mind I am extremely critical of the point of view advocated by the United States in regard to the International Criminal Court I was part of the Rome conference and so I saw the American delegation in action and I know that the one thing that the United States insisted upon was a right of veto of prosecution of American nationals in the International Criminal Court and this came to be known as American exceptionalism and the American delegation always tried to explain why the United States should be treated differently from any other country in the world and the international community would not buy that but what is even worse is that the insistence of the American government on writing a clause into the statute of the ICC that would give it a veto of the prosecution of American nationals was successful in the sense that the United States can preclude the prosecution of any American national in the ICC simply by conducting a bona fide investigation into the allegation of wrongdoing if they done that came to the conclusion there is no probable cause don't proceed with the prosecution it's just fine the ICC cannot step in and prosecute it's only if it turns out that the United States is unwilling or unable to prosecute that the ICC can step in so the United States simply wouldn't take yes for an answer and that I find most unfortunate because the contribution that the International Criminal Court can make in order to prevent atrocities committed by political leaders in the world I think is tremendous and for the United States to try to undermine the court I think is most unfortunate