Sharia in the West? What Place for Faith-Based Family Laws in Western Democracies?
Legal scholar John Witte Jr. discusses how Western legal systems grapple with non-state-based, family-law systems such as Sharia, Halacha and Canon Law. Witte predicts that the Western-legal-system handling of Sharia will become hotly politicized in America in the next few years, as has happened recently in Canada and the United Kingdom. He believes scholarship can aid in widening the conversation surrounding a potentially inflammatory topic. Speaker Biography: John Witte Jr. Witte is the Jonas Robitscher Professor of Law, Alonzo L. McDonald Distinguished Service Professor and director of the Center for the Study of Law and Religion Center at Emory University. He has published 220 articles, 15 journal symposia and 26 books, including recently "Religion and the American Constitutional Experiment" and "Sex, Marriage and Family Life in John Calvin???s Geneva." With major funding from the Pew, Ford, Lilly, Luce, and McDonald foundations, Witte has directed 12 major international research projects on democracy, human rights and religious liberty, and on marriage, family and children. He has been selected 11 times by Emory law students as the Most Outstanding Professor and has won dozens of other awards and prizes for his teaching and research. In 2012 he served as the Cary and Ann Maguire Chair in Ethics and American History at the Library's John W. Kluge Center. For captions, transcript, and more information visit www.loc.gov/today/cyberlc/feature_wdesc.php?rec=5943&loclr=ytb
