1.3 Session on “Rights, Culture, and Forgiveness”

Benjamin Berger, Shannon Hoff, and Alice MacLachlan

Law and legally secured rights, while they have come to be powerful means of articulating and accomplishing the demands of justice, also exist in tension with other ways of conceiving of justice. By means of discussion of phenomena such as culture, community, religion, forgiveness, apology, and the exception to the law, this panel will address the tensions between different conceptions of justice, and the significance and inadequacy of law and rights as mechanisms of justice.

1.6 Session on “Perils and Promises: Tensions between Justice and Other-Norms”

Pamela Couture, James Christie, Lowell Ewert

This panel will address the tensions that sometimes occur between ideals of justice and other social norms, such as memory and tradition, cultural expression, global security, and peace between religious and cultural communities. Are there instances when honouring particular cultural heritages should mitigate concerns for universal human rights? What roles should civil society play in addressing questions of rights, as compared to strong emphases on government obligations? What is the significance of social memory in public concerns about justice? Should there be limits to religious and cultural diversity in order to promote a common good?

1.8 Evening Public Lecture “Must Love and Justice Forever be at Odds?”

Nicholas Wolterstorff

The dominant theme in almost two millennia of discussions in the West about the relation between love and justice is the theme of tension or incompatibility: if one treats someone as one does because justice requires it, one is not acting out of love, and if one acts out of love toward someone, one is not treating them as one does because justice requires it. I will point to the paradoxes that this view yields, and then present a way of understanding love (and justice) such that love incorporates justice rather than being in tension with it, while also often going beyond what justice requires.