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Iain Tyrrell Benson (born 1955 in Edinburgh, Scotland) is a legal philosopher, writer, professor and practising legal consultant. The main focus of his work in relation to law and society has been to examine some of the various meanings that underlie terms of common but confused usage. His work towards an understanding of ''secular'' and ''secularism'' has been cited by the Supreme Court of Canada and the Constitutional Court of South Africa. He has also given critical study to the terms ''pluralism'', ''faith'', ''believer'', ''unbeliever'', ''liberalism'' and ''accommodation'' and examined the implications for various legal and non-legal usages. Benson was a member of the draft committee for the South African Charter of Religious Rights and Freedoms, a document which sets out core aspects of citizenship and the rights and freedoms of religion and conscience in a constitutional democracy. He has also made significant contributions to the understanding of the ''Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms'' and religious freedom under Canadian law. He was retained by the Government of Canada to author material concerning ''Religion and Public Policy'' as an aspect of ''Federal Multi-Culturalism Policy'' and is an ongoing expert advisor to the South African ''Council for the Promotion of Religious Freedoms''. An advocate that the public sphere should be open and inclusive of all citizens and their groups, whether their faith and belief commitments are based on non-religious or religious beliefs, Iain Benson was the first Executive Director of the Centre for Cultural Renewal, a non-partisan, non-denominational charitable foundation with status in both Canada and the United States, dedicated to examining the nature of pluralism with particular reference to the associational rights dimension of religion and expression. In 2010 he was appointed one of ten inaugural directors of the Global Centre for Pluralism along with Kofi Annan and Adrienne Clarkson and chaired by His Highness the Aga Khan IV. He was also the invited ''rapporteur'' on ''Law and Religious Diversity in Canada and South Africa'' to the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences at the Vatican City in May 2011 and was appointed as expert adviser to the ''South African Council for the Protection and Promotion of Religious Rights and Freedoms'' in September that same year. In his capacity as a constitutional and human rights lawyer, Benson has written and lectured extensively in the area of ethics, virtues and pluralism, and acted as an advisor in the fields of medical ethics and bioethics across Canada, Saudi Arabia, Eastern Europe, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand. Some of Benson's writings have appeared or been translated in French, Italian, German, Afrikaans, Flemish and Spanish. ==Biography== Iain Benson is the eldest of three children born to Kenneth and Margaret (née Scott) Benson, and was raised primarily in Victoria, B.C.. The family moved from Edinburgh to Quesnel, British Columbia, and then to Prince George, B.C., where Kenneth Benson worked as a ''Medical Health Officer'' and was later appointed Assistant Deputy Minister of Health for the government of British Columbia. Benson attended Oak Bay Senior Secondary School (1974) and obtained degrees from Queen's University, Ontario (English Literature B.A. Hons. 1980), University of Windsor, Ontario (Law JD 1984), St Catharine's College, Cambridge, England (Law M.A.1987), The University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa (Law, PhD. 2013) with a thesis entitled: "An Associational Framework for the Reconciliation of Competing Rights Claims Involving the Freedom of Religion" (Supervisor: Prof. Iain Currie). Some of his many published peer reviewed articles, book chapters and a short book, are available on-line on the Social Sciences Research Network In 1984 he worked as a summer research assistant based at Oxford University, England and was called the following year to the bar of British Columbia. Benson practised with the firm ''Alexander Holburn Beaudin & Laing'' before becoming a solicitor in 1987 with the ''British Columbia Industrial Relations Council'' (BCIRC). In 1989 he was appointed Senior Solicitor for the Council and practised there through the organisation's development into the ''Labour Relations Board of British Columbia''. He was appointed Senior Research Fellow for the Centre for Cultural Renewal in 1994, and in 2000 became the centre's first Executive Director. In 2008 Benson was invited to become the first non-national research associate for the ''South African Institute for Advanced Constitutional, Human Rights, Public and International Law'' (SAIFAC). The following year he was appointed Extraordinary Professor of Law in the Department of Constitutional and Philosophical Law at the University of the Free State, South Africa, became a Senior Research Fellow for the ''Chester Ronning Centre for the Study of Religion and Public Life'' at the University of Alberta and took up a position as Senior Associate Counsel at Canadian Law Firm, Miller Thomson. In 2010 Benson was appointed to the executive committee of the Foundation Board of the Global Centre for Pluralism in Ottawa and became a Member of the Law Society of Upper Canada. In 2011 he was admitted as a Member of the ''International Association of Constitutional Law'' at the ICAL meeting in Mexico and in 2013 became a Member of the International Consortium of Law and Religion Scholars ICLARS, Milan Italy; He is Senior Associate Fellow, International Institute for Hermeneutics, Albert-Ludwigs-Univ., Freiburg, Germany 2015, ongoing; Research Fellow, Religious Freedom and Business Foundation, Maryland, USA (2014, ongoing); Senior Research Fellow, Canadian Centre for The Responsibility to Protect (R2P), Munk Centre, Trinity College, Univ. of Toronto (2014, ongoing); Editorial Advisor, Canadian Race Relations Inst. (2015, ongoing) and Member of the African Consortium of Law and Religions Scholars ACLARS in Namibia 2015. In July 2015 he was invited to become an advising academic to the Open University project on Jurisprudence, UK.; in January 2014 he was Visiting Professor, Faculty of Law, University of Western Ontario, Canada where he taught a course on Comparative Constitutional Law. For the term 2014-2015 he was Visiting Scholar, Massey College, University of Toronto, Canada. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Iain Benson」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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