Religious Rules State Law And Normative Pluralism A Comparative Overview

This book is devoted to the study of the interplay between religious rules and State law. It explores how State recognition of religious rules can affect the degree of legal diversity that is available to citizens and why such recognition sometime results in more individual and collective freedom and sometime in a threat to equality of citizens before the law. The first part of the book contains a few contributions that place this discussion within the wider debate on legal pluralism. While State law and religious rules are two normative systems among many others, the specific characteristics of the latter are at the heart of tensions that emerge with increasing frequency in many countries. The second part is devoted to the analysis of about twenty national cases that provide an overview of the different tools and strategies that are employed to manage the relationship between State law and religious rules all over the world.

Offering extensive international and comparative law materials, as well as discussion of key United States First Amendment cases, international experts Durham and Scharffs bring vision and scope to the study of Law and Religion. The text and its continually updated online Supplement support courses on Law and Religion, Church and State, International Human Rights, Comparative Constitutional Law, and First Amendment. New to the Second Edition: ¿ National: Recent U.S. court cases and legislative moves dealing with religion in conflict with anti- discrimination norms, including immigration; same-sex marriage; and conscientious objection by religious organizations, government officials, pharmacies, businesses (including “wedding vendors”) to providing products, services, and insurance benefits in violation of religious beliefs ¿ International: Landmark religion cases in Canada, Europe, and Asia involving such issues as women’s rights, law school accreditation, display of religious symbols and wearing of face coverings in public (including schools); persecution of religious minorities, including prosecution for blasphemy; discussion of new levels of and responses to religious extremism ¿ Comparative: Discussions across multiple jurisdictions of such issues as education, tax, government regulation of religion, and women’s issues, such as genital cutting (worldwide, including U.S.) and divorce (“triple talaq” in India, Shari’a arbitration in Canada, and Shari’a councils in the U.K.) Professors and students will benefit from: ¿ Traditional law and religion course coverage of U.S. materials, including the major Free Exercise and Establishment Clause cases ¿ Comparative law cases and materials reflecting more than fifty countries and regions, and which include corporal punishment; compelled patriotic observances; state funding of religions; autonomy of religious organizations to choose personnel and provide services; conscientious objection in the military and in personal, employment, and educational settings; parameters of speech regulation, including hate speech and speech that offends religious sensibilities; anti- conversion laws; the rights of women in tension with religious claims of exclusion and divorce practices; and much more ¿ International law materials, including: o Key international and regional human rights instruments; 87 cases from the European Court of Human Rights; and key decisions of the Court of Justice of the European Union and the United Nations Human Rights Committee o Cases covering issues such as the right to register religious associations; headscarves and face coverings; religious slaughter for kosher and halal foods; exemptions from church taxes; conscientious objection; proselytizing; religious oaths; church autonomy; religious education; and conflicts arising between religious freedom and other human rights (e.g., women's rights, rights of indigenous peoples, sexual minorities, and children's rights) o Responses from inside and outside the Muslim world to the rise of violent Islamist extremism ¿ Islamic, Christian, Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist, and other perspectives on freedom of religion, touching on defamation of religion; the new constitution of Iraq; religious political parties in Turkey; the definition of being Jewish for rights of citizenship in Israel; the right of Muslim and Hindu women to enter sacred space in India; death sentences and extra-judicial lynching for perceived violation of blasphemy laws in Pakistan; and reactions of governments, including the government of Russia, to perceived religious extremism

The complex legal situations arising from the coexistence of international law, state law, and social and religious norms in different parts of the world often include scenarios of conflict between them. These conflicting norms issued from different categories of ‘laws’ result in difficulties in describing, identifying and analysing human rights in plural environments. This volume studies how normative conflicts unfold when trapped in the aspirations of human rights and their local realizations. It reflects on how such tensions can be eased, while observing how and why they occur. The authors examine how obedience or resistance to the official law is generated through the interaction of a multiplicity of conflicting norms, interpretations and practices. Emphasis is placed on the actors involved in raising or decreasing the tension surrounding the conflict and the implications that the conflict carries, whether resolved or not, in conditions of asymmetric power movements. It is argued that legal responsiveness to state law depends on how people with different identities deal with it, narrate it and build expectations from it, bearing in mind that normative pluralism may also operate as an instrument towards the exclusion of certain communities from the public sphere. The chapters look particularly to expose the dialogue between parallel normative spheres in order for law to become more effective, while investigating the types of socio-legal variables that affect the functioning of law, leading to conflicts between rights, values and entire cultural frames.

Das staatliche Recht moderner Verfassungsstaaten sieht sich aktuell mit einer zunehmenden Pluralisierung von Rechtsquellen und Rechtsanwendung konfrontiert. Eine dieser Tendenzen betrifft die Rolle und Anerkennung religiösen Rechts und religiöser Gerichte, die die bislang unumkehrbar erscheinende Säkularisierung staatlichen Rechts und dessen umfassende Regelungskraft in Frage stellen. Probleme, wie etwa die Anerkennung der Vorgaben des katholischen Kirchenrechts in Arbeitsrechtsprozessen, die rechtliche Bedeutung islamischer Scharia-Gerichte oder die Anwendung religiösen, fremden Rechts vor heimischen staatlichen Gerichten, stellen sich nicht nur in Deutschland. Mögliche Antworten und die ihnen zugrundeliegenden, unterschiedlichen empirischen und rechtlichen Vorbedingungen schildern die Autoren der in diesem Tagungsband zusammengefassten Landesberichte aus deutscher, taiwanischer, englischer, US-amerikanischer und israelischer Sicht sowie in einem rechtsvergleichenden Generalbericht. --

Religion is a prominent legal force despite the premise constructed and promoted by Western constitutionalism that it must be separated from the State in democracies. Education constitutes an area of human life that leaves ample scope for the expression of religious identity and shapes the citizens of the future. It is also the place of origin of a considerable number of normative conflicts involving religious identity that arise today in multicultural settings. The book deals with the interplay of law and religion in education through the versatility of religious law and legal pluralism, as well as religion’s possible adaptation and reconciliation with modernity, in order to consider and reflect on normative conflicts. It adopts the angle of the constitutional dimension of religion narrated in a comparative perspective and critically reflects on regulatory attempts by the State and the international community to promote new ways of living together.

This "Open Access" book investigates the legal reality of the church through a sociological lens and from the perspective of canon law studies, the discipline which researches the law and the legal structure of the Catholic Church. It introduces readers from various backgrounds to the sociology of canon law, which is both a legal and a theological field of study, and is the first step towards introducing a new subdiscipline of the sociology of canon law. As a theoretical approach to mapping out this field, it asks what theology and canon law may learn from sociology; it discusses the understanding of “law” in religious contexts; studies the preconditions of legal validity and effectiveness; and based on these findings it asks in what sense it is possible to speak of canon “law”. By studying a religious order as its struggles to find a balance between continuity and change, this book also contributes to the debates on religious law in modernity and the challenges it faces from secular states and plural societies. This book is of interest to researchers and students of the sociology of law, legal studies, law and religion, the sociology of religion, theology, and religious studies. This is an open access book.

Compares the modern legal instruments of Jewish, Christian and Muslim organisations in light of their historical religious laws.

Emphasising an empirical research to contemporary legal pluralist settings in Muslim contexts, the present collected volume contributes to a deepened understanding of legal pluralist issues and realities through comparative examination. This approach reveals some common features, such as the relevance of Islamic law in power struggles and in the construction of (state or national) identities, strategies of coping with coexisting sets of legal norms by the respective agents, or public debates about the risks induced by the recognition of religious institutions in migrant societies. At the same time, the studies contained in this volume reveal that legal pluralist settings often reflect very specific historical and social constellations, which demands caution towards any generalisation.

"Abstract Global legal pluralism has become one of the leading analytical frameworks for understanding and conceptualizing law in the twenty-first century"--

The accommodation of religious diversity in contemporary pluralist societies is undoubtedly amongst the most salient issues on today’s political agenda, not least due to the challenges posed by migration. A subject of considerable debate is how to reconcile the demands of religious and cultural diversity alongside political unity, that is, how to create a political community that is cohesive and stable and satisfies the legitimate aspirations of minorities. This volume provides a critical analysis of the institutional accommodations and legal frameworks conceived by and/or for historical religious groups and assesses their potential and shortcomings in providing for an integrated society based on human- and minority rights protection.