Victorian MPs debated whether or not the Inns of Court adequately governed the bar and effectively trained their members. The societies defended themselves from parliamentary assaults by insisting that legal etiquette ensured the gentlemanly character of the bar. This chapter examines disciplinary hearings for violations of etiquette at the Inns to consider the societies’ direct assertions of their authority over the operations of the legal profession. In the nineteenth century, breaches of legal etiquette largely pertained to ungentlemanly behavior, such as engaging in trade. In the geopolitical context of the early twentieth century, however, faced with members holding new radical political commitments, the societies overlaid concerns about gentlemanliness with worries over personal political expression and national loyalty. The societies manipulated legal etiquette to deliberately excuse or disbar members for similar offenses along lines that accorded more with members’ seeming Britishness or foreignness than with the legality or illegality of their actions.

Denominational identity, though poorly understood in theological terms, was socially decisive to postwar Americans. Lowell’s lifelong preoccupation with religion took the form of an ostentatious Catholicism in the 1940s, influenced his conscientious objection to World War II, and helps explain his poems about Jonathan Edwards. Paul Mariani discussed Lowell as a “Lost Puritan,” while Kay Jamison investigated the proximity of madness and faith as “states of possession,” and Elisa New sees a “visionary” impulse in the poet. Milton and Hopkins stimulated Lowell’s poetry as much as questions of ethics troubled it. Lowell’s religious temperament remained permanently alert, calling into questions fossilized distinctions between early and late Lowell. Its recognition and contextualization provides interpretive access to his monologues and family portraits from Mills of the Kavanaughs to Life Studies, resurfacing wistfully in Day by Day.

Chapter 7 forms the second of the two chapters examining cases which one would expect to fall into the middle circle in the loose concentric circles model, where both forum internum relevance and countervailing factors may both be strong or both be weak and, as such, for the degree of protection offered to depend heavily on the way in which the ECtHR balances the factors. Chapter 7 examines cases in which applicants have objected to acting contrary to their religion or belief, or have objected to disclosing their religion or belief. Again, this chapter seeks to show that the ECtHR’s approach is consistent with its general principles concerning Article 9 as the ECtHR balances factors indicating a violation (primarily, but not only, forum internum relevance) with countervailing factors indicating no violation, to reach its decision. This chapter reiterates that the fact-sensitive nature of such cases means that protection offered ranges from a high to a low degree depending on the particular circumstances of the case.

This final chapter focuses on acts of commemoration in the centenary years of 2014-18. It examines the breadth of performance work produced in response to the centenary. It examines large-scale national events and installations including the Tower of London’s Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red, Heard’s Shrouds of the Somme, the National Theatre’s were here because were here, National Theatre Wale’s site-specific Mametz and English National Ballet’s Lest We Forget. At the same time it places new and important focus on the small-scale and intimate performance which proliferated during the centenary including the work of community groups. In looking at the form and content of these productions the chapter draws attention to how theatre was used to celebrate local stories; make visible Chinese, South Asian and African contributions to and experiences of the war, and to address women’s role within the conflict, and rethink conscientious objection. Plays considered include Loh’s Forgotten, Cumper’s Chigger Foot Boys, and Shah’s radio play Subterranean Sepoys. Finally the chapter shows how centenary plays often reimagine the war in relation to an institution, historical figure or community, rather than engaging directly with the combat. Examples include Brenton’s Doctor Scroggy’s War, Gill’s Versailles, Porter’s The Christmas Truce and McAndrew’s An August Bank Holiday.

From the 1880s onward, a vigorous movement inspired by Tolstoy’s Christian anarchist thought developed both within the Russian Empire and internationally. This chapter traces the activity of Tolstoyan communities, publishing houses, societies, and newspapers, and considers the role they played in building and maintaining international Tolstoyan networks. It considers how Tolstoy’s thought was interpreted in different national contexts as well as how and why enthusiasm for Tolstoy’s ideas emerged or revived in specific periods: it also discusses some key debates and challenges that Tolstoyans confronted, and the ways these were debated both within the movement and in interactions with those outside it. Tolstoy’s focus on following one’s own conscience meant that he strongly objected to the idea of a movement in his name. But as this chapter makes clear, while Tolstoyans were always fiercely independent-minded, the ideas and causes around which they united gave them a strong sense of being part of a collective, wherever and whenever they were active.

In acknowledging that ethics should be regarded as the cornerstone of healthcare practice and the significance of professional regulation for healthcare practitioners providing patient care, it is vital to develop an understanding of how and why this is the case. This chapter has been written to support all perioperative practitioners in developing this knowledge in the context of the operating theatre. The chapter includes discussion of some of the key moral theories and frameworks that may be used to guide reflective, ethical decision making before moving on to consider the role of professional codes and regulation in prescribing and enforcing standards of professional conduct and directing ethical decision making.

The trial run of civil defence and the gas mask in September 1938 yielded several important lessons for the government. One was that it urgently needed to solve the absence of anti-gas protection for infants and toddlers, which it did by the time Britain entered the Second World War in September 1939. Until the outbreak of war, it continued to encounter resistance to these measures, and when war broke out, some conscientious objectors used their refusal to accept their gas masks as a sign of their commitment to oppose all war. As for the majority who accepted the mask as the gift of a benevolent state, the issue became whether or not they would follow instructions to carry them whenever they left their homes. The government soon came to see gas mask carrying not only as a mark of good morale, but also as indicating whether or not someone was being a good wartime citizen, willing to follow instructions in order to keep the entire civilian population safe. Mass Observation delegated respondents to survey who carried their masks, and they recorded these efforts as mapping onto attitudes towards the war effort. When the worst of the Battle of Britain had subsided with a decrease in devastating aerial attacks by April 1941, the government launched a concerted campaign, using posters, film, and staged gas mask drills to encourage the population to remember that “Hitler Will Give No Warning,” so everyone had to accept the obligation always to have a gas mask at the ready. Carrying and caring for the gas mask became a sign that you accepted your duty to participate in the war effort.

Conscientious objection to sexual and reproductive healthcare (refusal to perform abortion, assisted reproductive technologies, prenatal diagnosis, contraception, including emergency contraception and sterilization, care for trans people etc.) has become a widespread global phenomenon and constitutes a barrier to these services for many.The tension between honoring one’s own integrity and respecting others’ rights to differ, and to have access to legal services, is further complicated for clinicians who have fiduciary duties to put patients’ needs ahead of their own.Medical and residency education must reconcile the right to conscience of students and residents with the need to ensure that these students and residents are well trained, able to demonstrate competency in all the components of their profession and specialty and clear about their fiduciary duties

Michael DeBoer identifies five periods in US state constitutions’ protections of religious conscience. The first and second periods, from roughly 1776 to the 1830s, saw state constitutions grant solicitude to religious conscience and free exercise. The end of the second period saw all states abolish church establishments. The third period, from the 1830s to the 1920s, saw many new states in the Union, and their constitutions were largely protective of religious conscience. The fourth period, from the 1920s to the 1970s, saw the incorporation of the US Constitution’s religion clauses against the states, and new or amended state constitutions’ textual conscience protections borrowed language from the US Constitution. Some state interpretations of conscience-related issues closely mirrored those from the Supreme Court. In the fifth period, from the 1970s to present, some states were protective of religious conscience, while other states have hewed to religion-harmful interpretations occasioned by the Supreme Court’s case of Employment Division v. Smith. In this period, some states passed Religious Freedom Restoration Acts (RFRAs) modeled after the federal statute.

Mark Rienzi observes the tension in the United States' pluralistic democracy between religious diversity and majority rule. He notes that the Supreme Court has forged a path of religious accommodation, versus forced conformity, and this has not led to anarchy. In the past, the Court and legislatures have sometimes pushed limited religious toleration or even forced conformity. Today, the accommodationist path is illustrated in the Court’s second Jehovah’s Witness-pledge case, and in legislative and Supreme Court treatment of conscientious objectors to military service. Conscience protections for those opposed to abortion have been strong Roe v. Wade in 1973. They have been extended to institutions and individuals, and often protect religious and non-religious objections. Even following the Court’s 1990 case curtailing mandatory Free Exercise accommodations, Congress and many states adopted statutory religious conscience protections. Many states interpreted their state constitutions to provide protections for religious freedom. This has not resulted in anarchy but has preserved the ability of many medical professionals and religious social service institutions to continue their services.

This chapter explores the 4,000 conscientious objectors (COs) who refused to kill during World War I. It examines the Selective Service Act of 1917 and the religious and secular principles that led men to become COs. By refusing military combat service and resisting the military rules in army camps and military prisons that violated their conscience, COs demonstrated courage, sacrifice, and commitment to principle. Although most COs accepted noncombatant military service or alternative civilian service, 450 absolutists, who refused to cooperate with military authorities and rejected all service under military control, were court-martialed and imprisoned. In camps and prisons, COs defied military rules, regulations, and policies. Their resistance included refusal to obey orders, work strikes, hunger strikes, general strikes, noncooperation, and nonviolent revolts. Furthermore, COs were often severely abused, which led to a wartime civil liberties movement that defended (and which included) COs and that evolved into the postwar American Civil Liberties Union. Finally, this chapter shows how COs contributed to peace and freedom by advancing civil liberties, inspiring future COs, liberalizing World War II conscription legislation, secularizing the peace movement, and pioneering the nonviolent direct action that infused post-1945 peace and justice movements.

This short conclusory chapter summarizes the main claims of the book and summarizes how the book has provided evidence to support those claims. It shows that the book’s overall contribution then is to have demonstrated that there is, and there should be in a liberal state, a general right to conscientious exemption available to a person who objects to any legal obligation on the basis of a religious or non-religious conscientious belief.

The chapter introduces the main claims of the book, how they are defended and their implications. The chapter then makes a positive case in favour of the general right to conscientious exemption and for it being equally available to religious and non-religious conscientious objectors. It argues that a non-absolute right to conscientious exemption is justified by reference to a cluster of moral values, including the demands of the state’s duty of neutral pluralism (the duty being grounded in the value of individual moral responsibility and respect for ethical pluralism), respect for personal autonomy, freedom of conscience and concern for individual well-being. The chapter justifies the institution of the general right by showing that it provides holders of minority moral views with an alternative forum, i.e. a court of law, where they may be able to bring a claim and ask for exemptions from legal obligations which impinge on their conscience. It concludes by showing that the justifications provided for exemptions generally and for the general right cannot justify the right being a privilege of only those that object on the basis of non-religious beliefs. Non-religious conscientious beliefs should also benefit from the general right.