Proselytism and the right to freedom from improper irreligious influence: the example of public school education

Jurisprudentially speaking, proselytism is a concept within the larger genus of the protection of religious rights and freedoms. The word lends itself to differing opinions. However, there is a popular school of thought that proselytism has to do only with influencing people to adopt a particular religion. Such an understanding relies on the view that only the religious can be insidious and bear the potential to improperly proselytise, and thus excludes the possibility of improper irreligious forms of influence. In referring to the example of public-school education, it is argued that as much as the religious has the potential for improper proselytising, irreligious teachings or expressions also run the risk of improper proselytising. Not only are irreligious beliefs in many instances diametrically opposed to religious beliefs; they are a belief in themselves and cannot be seen as necessarily harmless or without the potential to proselytise improperly. Consequently, this article introduces an equitable and accommodative understanding of proselytism, which places the potentially harmful effects of both religious and irreligious beliefs on an equal footing with each other (something befitting to plural and democratic paradigms). This article therefore also cultivates further debate on improper irreligious proselytism in religious rights and freedoms jurisprudence, a scant topic in human rights jurisprudence

The South African Constitutional Court and the unborn

The South African Constitutional Court has not yet been confronted with having to make a finding on the status of the unborn against the background of the South African Bill of Rights. Expecting that the Constitutional Court will sometime in the future be approached in this regard, this article presents some preparatory foundational insights on what the approach of the said Court should be. In this regard, the law-making function of the judiciary and the importance of an informative and rational approach towards the protection of the unborn in the judicial process are emphasised. A more nuanced approach by the judiciary towards the status of the unborn will provide more sensitivity towards matters which overlap with the practice of religion on the one hand and the protection of the unborn on the other. Examples in this regard are conscientious objections by medical practitioners against partaking in abortions due to their religious beliefs, and the dissemination of ethical or jurisprudential knowledge of the unborn to students in secular institutions of education who, in accordance with their religious beliefs, oppose the termination of the unborn. Religious institutions which oppose abortions will also be obligated by their own tenets to form part of such a judicial process, and this is allowed for by the Constitutional Court of South Africa

Algebraically special solutions in AdS/CFT

We investigate the AdS/CFT interpretation of the class of algebraically special solutions of Einstein gravity with a negative cosmological constant. Such solutions describe a CFT living in a 2+1 dimensional time-dependent geometry that, generically, has no isometries. The algebraically special condition implies that the expectation value of the CFT energy-momentum tensor is a local function of the boundary metric. When such a spacetime is slowly varying, the fluid/gravity approximation is valid and one can read off the values of certain higher order transport coefficients. To do this, we introduce a formalism for studying conformal, relativistic fluids in 2+1 dimensions that reduces everything to the manipulation of scalar quantities.Comment: 30 pages + appendices, 2 figures; v2: typos corrected, ref. adde

Seeking deliberation on the unborn in international law

International human rights instruments and jurisprudence radiate an understanding of international law as also serving to protect fundamental rights and the interests of the individual. The idea that human rights provide a credible framework for constructing common norms among nations and across cultures is both powerful and attractive. If the protection of being human serves as the common denominator in human rights discussion, and if human rights are deeply inclusive, despite being culturally and historically diverse, then a failure to deliberate on the legal status and protection of the unborn may be seen as a failure to extend respect where it is due. Such deliberation is required, irrespective of the fact that jurisprudential debate on the unborn and on abortion is complex and controversial. The protection of human life, well-being, and dignity are essential aims of the United Nations Charter and the international system created to implement it. Although there have been collective efforts resulting in substantial development in international human rights law, the international community has not approached the legal status and protection of the unborn as a matter of urgency – this, while much has been accomplished regarding women, children, animals and cloning. This article therefore argues for the development of a deliberative framework so as to further the recognition (not necessarily in an absolute sense) of the unborn in international law, bearing in mind that opposition to abortion does not of itself constitute an attack on a woman\u27s right to respect for privacy in her life. The article also sets out what such deliberation on the legal status and protection of the unborn entails, against the background of a procedurally-rational approach