free-thinking free school/ 斯坦福捍宗教自由設“實踐診所。”

bbc
http://www.bbc.co.uk/zhongwen/trad/uk/2010/07/100730_edu_atheist_school.shtml

英歡迎無神論者創辦自由學校

牛津大學教授理查德•道金斯表示他非常喜歡創辦「自由思想學校」的理念。 

英國教育大臣邁克爾·高夫（Michael Gove）日前表示，無神論者可以在政府教育改革的方針下創辦自由學校。

高夫說，他對一些來自個人的提案非常感興趣，其中就包括牛津大學生物學教授理查德·道金斯（Richard Dawkins）。
據悉，《上帝錯覺》（The God Delusion）的作者道金斯教授於上月表示，他非常喜歡創辦「自由思想學校」（free-thinking free school）的理念。
在高夫提出的「自由學校」的計劃下，家長、教師，及慈善組織個人有權立支配納稅人的錢，來開辦非宗教自由學校。
本周三，在回答議員們提出的問題時，高夫說，「在讀到的所有提案中，讓我印象非常深刻的是來自理查德·道金斯的理念。他希望最大地利用英國教育體制所能帶來的可能性，開辦基於無神論的新型學校。」
不過，作為兩個孩子的父親，高夫表示，自己不會為孩子們選擇這種推崇無神論的學校就讀。
他說，「我不會為我的孩子們選擇這種學校，但是這體現了教育改革的本質——自由，我們應該為家長和學生們提供更多的選擇。」
懷疑與批判
高夫告訴議員們說，「他意識到一些家長不願意將自己的孩子送進基於宗教信仰的學校就讀。因此對於這些人來說，他們有權選擇不同的學校。」
他還說，如果道金斯教授真心希望開辦這種新型學校，他非常樂意看到學校創辦申請。
道金斯教授早先曾表示，自己對於聯合政府提出的自由學校的理念很感興趣，不過自己更願意將自由學校稱為「自由思想學校」。
他說，「我絕不會像灌輸宗教理念一樣向孩子們灌輸無神論的理念。我會教給孩子們靠證據說話，時刻保持懷疑及批判的態度，以及開闊的思想。」


*****

斯坦福捍宗教自由創診所式教育

ETHAN BRONNER 報道 2013年02月06日

加州帕洛阿爾托——在兩個保守組織的支持下，斯坦福法學院(Stanford Law School)在美國開設了唯一一家致力於宗教自由的法律教育診所（clinical legal education，法律教育診所，是20世紀60年代在美國法學院興起的法律實踐性課程。這種模式是仿效醫學院利用診所實習培養醫生的形式，使學生接觸 真實的當事人和處理真實案件——譯註）。這一舉措揭示了政教之爭的現狀和法律教育實踐的成長。

 HC評
漢譯優缺點互見: 譯注值得鼓勵
缺點是 黑體字翻譯錯誤   hands-on legal education 不是"法律教育實踐"  而是(親手帶) "密切而親自參與的教育方式"

該校的新宗教自由診所通過貝克特宗教自由基金(Becket Fund for Religious Liberty)獲得了由約翰·鄧普林頓基金會(John Templeton Foundation)提供的160萬美元的啟動資金，它在一定程度上反映了診所式教育的規模需進一步擴大的認識。在歷史上，這種診所曾主要體現了左翼對貧困和住房的擔憂。

按圖放大

Jim Wilson/The New York Times

 創辦斯坦福大學法學院宗教自由診所的主任詹姆斯·A·桑耐（中）和首批四位參與者，從左至右分別是：曼紐爾·潑索羅、克萊爾·穆雷、埃里克·漢密爾頓和詹姆斯·威金頓。

斯坦福法學院診所式法律教育副主任勞倫斯·C·馬歇爾(Lawrence C. Marshall)說：“那些給米特·羅姆尼(Mitt Romney)投票的47%的選民也應有上課的權力。診所式教育是醫學教育的中心，我的任務一直就是讓診所式教育在法律教育中具有同等地位。我們應該像關 注性別、種族和民族的多元化那樣致力於意識形態的多元化”。10年前，當馬歇爾在西北大學法學院(Northwestern Law School)擔任教授時，他因幫助死刑犯翻案而成為了自由主義者的英雄。

於本月開始學業的診所學生們將接手以宗教自由表達為主的案件——包括代表因拒絕在周六上班而遭到聯邦快遞開除的基督復臨教派教友，割禮要求遭到拒絕的皈依猶太教的囚犯以及因計劃建造清真寺而被告知違反土地使用法的穆斯林組織。

然而，他們不會去觸碰問題的另一面——即挑戰政府對信仰的首肯。這包括在公共廣場擺放基督誕生畫、在公共活動中進行祈禱以及與信眾抵制同性戀權益有關的案件（一位基督教攝影師拒絕拍攝同性戀婚姻），還有與新醫保法有關的問題（一個企業主拒絕報銷僱員的避孕花費）。

創辦該診所的主任詹姆斯·A·桑耐(James A. Sonne)表示，“在製作我們的訴訟名冊時，我們決定代表這些信眾。我們的工作是捍衛宗教自由而不是擺脫宗教。”他還解釋說，需要學生律師捍衛的是信徒而不是政府。

桑耐成長於新澤西州切里希爾附近一個名義聖公會的家庭，是一位精神分析學家的兒子。他在杜克大學(Duke University)就讀的時候皈依了天主教。他在哈佛法學院深造後赴天主教學院聖母瑪利亞法學院(Ave Maria School of Law)擔任教授。他承認，宗教自由爭論已在很大程度上沾染了政治色彩，但是他也表示並不希望他所設立的診所被外界看作是保守派的項目。

他最初的四名學生——分別是摩門教徒、衛理公會教徒和天主教徒，還有一位自小信奉的是基督復臨安息日會——對此表示認同，他們說自己受到診所的吸引，是因為它所提出的問題極具深度，而且提供真正的律師實踐，包括與潛在的客戶見面以及上訴審查。

診所學生、26歲的摩門教徒詹姆斯·威金頓(James Wigginton)說：“這不僅關乎強大的家庭價值觀，而且還涉及民主。人們需要在公共場合公開表達其宗教理念。我希望，這個舉動既能吸引自由主義者，也能吸引保守派。”

第一修正案寫道，“國會不得制訂設立宗教或者限制其自由實踐的法律”，而近些年來主要的政治分歧在於，這兩點當中哪一點是重點。自由主義者傾向於關注設立宗教或政府強制，而保守派則更注重宗教的自由實踐。

儘管美國歷史上的多數宗教自由之爭都集中在基督教領域——浸信會對重浸派，新教徒對天主教徒——然而在如今，按照法律診所理念的發起人、法學教授邁克·W·麥克康奈爾(Michael W. McConnell)的話來說，分歧的主體是教徒和非教徒。

或按照基督復臨安息日會的領袖、律師阿蘭·J·雷納克(Alan J. Reinach)的話來說，發生爭鬥的一方希望政府控制教會，而另一方則希望教會控制政府。

全美主要保守派學者對診所的設立表示首肯，他們認為這是精英法律教育的突破。耶魯大學法學院(Yale Law School)史蒂芬·L·卡特(Stephen L. Carter)將其奉為“里程碑”，哥倫比亞大學法學院的飛利浦·罕伯格(Philip Hamburger)稱其為“福佑”，而喬治城大學(Georgetown University)的托馬斯·F·法爾(Thomas F. Farr)則將其稱為“轉折點”。

然而，並不是所有人對此都感到心潮澎湃。斯坦福大學法學院三年級學生、歷史學博士候選人凱瑟琳·貝林(Catherine Baylin)說，診所工作的方向出現了偏離，反映的是保守基督教徒所設計的爭論路線——這讓自由派學生很擔心。

她說：“它關係到我們如何談論這些事情，而且這樣看來，宗教信仰似乎是固有的特權。此外，沒有人提及當今宗教自由所引發的真正問題，例如伊斯蘭恐懼症(Islamophobia)。”

政教分離美國人聯合會(Americans United for Separation of Church and State)執行總監巴瑞·林恩(Barry Lynn)表示，他對“主流法學院接受貝克特基金會的贈與感到吃驚”，他將基金會描述為“為宗教組織和教徒提供優惠待遇的組織，即便這一舉措會傷害到第三 方。”

但是貝克特基金會的漢娜·C·史密斯(Hannah C. Smith)表示，像林恩這樣的自由派所說的嚴格意義上的分離屏障在憲法中是不存在的。她於周一參加了有關開設這一診所的專題討論會。她說，她的組織正努力展現“有些由上帝賦予的權利是在政府形成之前就已經存在了。上帝賜予了人類去探尋他的渴望。宗教自由意味着我們必須保護探索宗教真理的權利不受政府的干 預。”

斯坦福大學新的診所已增至11家——包括社區法律、刑法、環境法和移民法——而這也成為了美國各大法學院增加實踐教育的舉措，因為各大院校都在努力 展示它們正在傾聽學生的訴求。據法律系主任伊麗莎白·馬基爾(M. Elizabeth Magill)稱，在斯坦福大學，約有三分之二的學生加入了診所，而且學校正考慮讓每個學生最終都能成為其中的一員。

研究了診所式教育發展的密歇根大學(University of Michigan)法學院教授大衛·桑塔克羅斯(David Santacroce)說，自1990年關於診所的法律評論文章《地下室里發生的事情》(What’s Going On Down There in the Basement?)發表以來，該領域取得了很大的進展。
他說，“診所不再只是嬉皮士學生的天下。我們有商法診所、人口拐賣診所和移民診所，這是我們服務更廣泛學生群體的舉措之一。”

診所開業慶典主講嘉賓、弗吉尼亞大學(University of Virginia)法學教授道格拉斯·雷科克(Douglas Laycock)說，令他感到吃驚的是，宗教少數派和同性戀人群實際上在異口同聲地對社會說——“我無法改變，而且只要我沒有傷害他人，人們不應該提這種 要求。”

他同時對斯坦福大學開設診所的決定表示讚賞。但是他說，從整體意義來看，該診所並不是宗教自由派診所。如果單看其訴訟名冊，他更傾向於將其稱為“宗教自由實踐診所。”

本文最初發表於2013年1月22日。
翻譯：Charlie

At Stanford, Clinical Training for Defense of Religious Liberty

By ETHAN BRONNER February 06, 2013

 

PALO ALTO, Calif. — Backed by two conservative groups, Stanford Law School has opened the nation’s only clinic devoted to religious liberty, an indication both of where the church-state debate has moved and of the growth in hands-on legal education.

Begun with $1.6 million from the John Templeton Foundation, funneled through the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, the school’s new Religious Liberty Clinic partly reflects a feeling that clinical education, historically dominated by the left’s concerns about poverty and housing, needs to expand.
“The 47 percent of the people who voted for Mitt Romney deserve a curriculum as well,” said Lawrence C. Marshall, the associate dean for clinical legal education at Stanford Law School. “My mission has been to make clinical education as central to legal education as it is to medical education. Just as we are concerned about diversity in gender, race and ethnicity, we ought to be committed to ideological diversity.” Mr. Marshall became a hero to liberals for his work to exonerate death penalty inmates when he was a professor at Northwestern Law School a decade ago.
The clinic’s students, who began this month, are taking cases focused on free expression of religion — representing Seventh-day Adventists who were fired by FedEx for refusing to work on Saturdays, a Jewish convert in prison whose request to be circumcised was rejected and a Muslim group that was told its plan to build a mosque violated land-use laws.

They will avoid the other side of the issue — challenging government endorsement of faith. This includes crèches in public squares, prayer sessions at public events, and cases tied to believers’ rejection of gay rights (a Christian photographer refusing to shoot a same-sex wedding) and elements of the new health care law (a business owner refusing to cover contraceptives for employees).

“In framing our docket, we decided we would represent the believers,” said James A. Sonne, the clinic’s founding director, explaining that the believers, rather than governments, were the ones in need of student lawyers to defend them. “Our job is religious liberty rather than freedom from religion.”

Mr. Sonne, who grew up the son of a psychoanalyst in a nominally Episcopalian home near Cherry Hill, N.J., converted to Roman Catholicism while a student at Duke University. He went on to Harvard Law School and later a professorship at Ave Maria School of Law, a Catholic institution. He acknowledges the political coloration of much of the religious-freedom debate but says he does not want his clinic to be seen as a program for conservatives.
His first four students — a Mormon, a Methodist, a Catholic and someone brought up as a Seventh-day Adventist — agree, saying they were drawn to the clinic by the profound questions it raises and the real lawyering it offers, from meeting a potential client to appellate review.
“This is not only about strong family values but about democracy,” said James Wigginton, 26, the Mormon member of the clinic. “Religious ideas need to be expressed openly in public. Hopefully that attracts liberals as well as conservatives.”
The First Amendment says that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” and a major political divide of recent years has been which of those needs more attention. Liberals tend to worry about religious establishment or imposition by government, while conservatives mostly focus on free exercise.
And while religious-freedom disputes through much of the country’s history were between Christian sects — Baptists versus Anabaptists, Protestants versus Catholics — the divide today, according to Michael W. McConnell, a law professor here who came up with the idea for the clinic, is between those who are religiously committed and those who are not.
Or as Alan J. Reinach, a leader and lawyer with the Seventh-day Adventists, put it, there is a fight between those who want government to control the church and those who want the church to control government.

Leading conservative scholars across the country welcomed the opening of the clinic as a breakthrough in elite legal education. Stephen L. Carter of Yale Law School hailed it as a “milestone,” Philip Hamburger of Columbia Law called it a “blessing,” and Thomas F. Farr of Georgetown University called it “corner turning.”

But not everyone is so enthusiastic. Catherine Baylin, a third-year law student and doctoral candidate in history at Stanford, said the way the clinic’s work was being pitched echoed the way conservative Christians frame the debate — and liberal students, she said, are concerned.

“It matters how we talk about things, and it seems with this approach religious belief is inherently privileged,” she said. “Moreover, no one is mentioning the real religious-freedom concern of our day, Islamophobia.”

Barry Lynn, the executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, said he was “shocked that a major law school would accept a gift from Becket,” which he described as “a group that wants to give religious institutions or individuals a kind of preferential treatment, even if that hurts a third party.”

But Hannah C. Smith of Becket, who took part in a panel discussion here on Monday to observe the clinic’s opening, said what liberals like Mr. Lynn call the strict wall of separation is found nowhere in the Constitution. Her group, she said, is working to show that “there are certain God-given rights that existed before the state. God gave people the yearning to discover him. Religious freedom means we have to protect the right to search for religious truth free from government intrusion.”

The new clinic joins 10 others at Stanford — including community law, criminal law, environmental law and immigrants’ rights — and is part of the increase in practical education at law schools nationwide as institutions try to show that they are responding to students’ needs. At Stanford, some two-thirds of the students take part in a clinic, and the school is considering making everyone do so eventually, according to its dean, M. Elizabeth Magill.
David Santacroce, a professor at the University of Michigan Law School who has studied the growth of clinical education, said the field had come a long way since a 1990 law-review article about clinics that was titled “What’s Going On Down There in the Basement?”

“Clinics are no longer a place for hippie students,” he said. “We have business-law clinics, a human-trafficking clinic and immigration clinics as part of a move to serve a broad swath of students.”

Douglas Laycock, a professor of law at the University of Virginia and the keynote speaker here at the clinic’s celebratory opening, said he was struck by how religious minorities and gay people were telling society essentially the same thing — “I cannot change, and as long as I am not harming others, I shouldn’t be asked to.”

He also praised Stanford’s decision to open the clinic. But he said it is not a religious-liberty clinic in the full sense of the term. Given its docket, he would have named it the “free-exercise clinic.”