Harold J. Berman is the Robert W. Woodruff Professor of Law at Emory University. He is also James Barr Ames Professor of Law, emeritus, at Harvard University, where he taught from 1948 to 1985 and again in 1986 and 1989. His current courses include World Law and Comparative Legal History (The Western Legal Tradition). Professor Berman is the author of 25 books and more than 300 articles. His prize-winning book, Law and Revolution: The Formation of the Western Legal Tradition (1983), has been published in German, French, Chinese, Russian, Polish, Spanish, Italian and Lithuanian translations. His other books include Justice in the U.S.S.R. (revised edition, 1963), Faith and Order: The Reconciliation of Law and Religion (1993) and Law and Revolution II: The Impact of the Protestant Reformations on the Western Legal Tradition (2003). He is a Fellow of The Carter Center of Emory University, with special interests in U.S.-Russian relations. He served on the Executive Committee of the Russian Research Center of Harvard University from 1952 to 1984 and was a member of the Legal Committee of the U.S.-U.S.S.R. Trade and Economic Council from 1974 to 1991. In 1961-62 Professor Berman spent a year in Moscow, U.S.S.R., as a guest scholar of the Institute of State and Law of the U.S.S.R. Academy of Sciences and a lecturer on American law at Moscow University. In the spring semester of 1982 he was again at Moscow State University as a Fulbright lecturer on American law. His book, The Nature and Functions of Law: An Introduction for Students of the Arts and Sciences (1958; 6th ed., 2004, with William R. Greiner and Samir N. Saliba), is widely used in college and business school courses. He is a co-founder and member of the Editorial Board of the Journal of Law and Religion and has served on the Board of Directors of the Council on Religion and Law since its formation in 1975. In 1994 he was awarded the annual Journal of Law and Religion Award at Hamline University School of Law in St. Paul, Minnesota, in recognition of his lifetime contributions in the field of law and religion.

Johan D. Van der Vyver is a former professor of law at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. He is an expert on human rights law and has been involved in the promotion of human rights in South Africa. In 1990-91, Professor van der Vyver was the visiting I.T. Cohen Professor of International Law and Human Rights at Emory; he continued to visit Emory in alternate years to teach courses in international human rights. In 1995 he was appointed the I.T. Cohen Professor of International Law and Human Rights at Emory. He also served as a Fellow in the Human Rights Program of The Carter Center from 1995 to 1998. He is the author of many books and more than 200 law review articles, popular notes, chapters in books and book reviews on human rights and a variety of other subject matters.