How Law and Religion Use Things in Practice

2018

This book explores different theories of law, religion and tradition, from both a secular and a religious perspective. It reflects on how tradition and change can affect religious and secular legal reasoning, identifying the patterns of legal evolution within religious and secular traditions. It is often taken for granted that, even in law, change corresponds and correlates to progress - that things ought to be changed and they will necessarily get better. There is no doubt that legal changes over the centuries have made it possible to enhance the protection of individual rights and to somewhat contain the possibility of tyranny and despotism. But progress is not everything in law: stability and certainty lie at the core of the rule of law. Similarly, religious and religious laws could not survive without traditions; and yet, they still evolve, and their evolution is often intermingled with secular law. The book asks (and in some ways answers) the questions: what is the role of trad...

Christian concept of the common good, he argues, offers a more compelling framework for addressing issues of conscience. Jacqueline Laing traces the natural law tradition through the classical and medieval periods and defends it against Bentham's charge that the natural law and therefore also natural rights are "nonsense upon stilts". She argues that it is the idea of the natural law that undergirds human rights with its concern for universal and timeless values. Laing contends that if we want to hold on to the idea that certain activities and actions are timelessly unjust, whether genocide, child abuse, rape, or slavery, then we have to jettison our view that both morality and law in its fullest sense, i.e. that which binds the human conscience, are mere human constructs or social conventions. Charlotte Smith highlights one of the most ancient and venerable interfaces between religion and law, namely the question of establishment. Reflecting on the English example, she defines establishment or, rather, points out how fluid that definition is, and then outlines the various justifications for its English form. Some of these, she recognises, are no longer tenable but others, in particular the argument that establishment signals that there is a place for religious faith, in all its forms, in public life (increasingly needed in the face of aggressive secularism), remain persuasive-at least for now. Julian Rivers asks whether English law is Christian and answers with a careful 'yes and no' , depending on how one reads the question. If being Christian means directly defending Christianity or promoting the church, the answer, he shows, is no, and has effectively been no for over a century. If, however, it means being consistent with a Christian view of the proper purpose and content of secular law, then it is broadly Christian-although, as Rivers concludes, we cannot assume it will always remain so. Finally, David McIlroy systematically dismantles the idea that law is amoral , without foundation in the ethical universe that we all inhabit. We need, instead, he argues, to see it clearly for what it is, a 'branch' or 'sub-category' of morality. This does not mean we should equate law with morality. But because law is a reflection of our substantive, shared moral commitments, we should be more willing to debate, seriously and in a sustained way, what those moral commitments are, and how far they are shared. 10 Kesh (uncut hair), the kangha (a wooden comb), the kara (a metal bracelet), the kachera (cotton undershorts tied with a drawstring) and the kirpan.

Religion, directly or indirectly, is part in the people's life (for believers as well as non-believers who necessarily assimilate it, sometimes unwittingly), and for this reason it become an element that shapes all of their ethic, social, legal, economical and personal affairs. In fact, religious factor plays a fundamental role in the architecture of the law systems. This paper tries to clarify that between the institutes of civil law and the rules of denominational laws there is a continuous process of osmosis. In that sense we can talk about of an " osmotic process between religion and law " and of a " nomopoietic function of religions " In fact, religions, among others, are one of the players that suggest good practices, especially in their function of influencing the civil law systems. The religion and law osmosis produce important consequences in law systems: the " religious lawmaking " , the presence of religion in civil jurisprudence and the relevance of religious courts. Religion are also capable of obstructing the elitist transformation of law (dictated by major economic private powers), so that it regains the authentic meanings on which it was founded, thus contributing to the evolution of civil systems. In fact, is emerging a new legal koiné that arises from economic practice based on negotiating tools today at the service of the great private economic powers. It is a uniform legal language (mercantilistic) that escapes the political control of the legal systems. Precisely where the political grip of the law is minor, religious traditions become cultural imperatives that construct and dimension these new practices, thus fulfilling a real nomopoietic function. This creates legal rules capable of dealing with differences without undoing them is the main way to govern successfully in today's multicultural society. SUMMARY: 1. Together in diversity: law and religion in modern civil law systems. – 2. Religious traditions and the law. – 3. The religion and law osmosis in law-making processes. – 4. The religion and law osmosis in jurisdiction. – 5. As a strategy: the nomopoietic function of religions in the legal koine.

SUMMARY: 1. The value of religious law in modern (and secular) states-2. Religious rules and individual choices in Europe-3. Religious law and the fields in which it can operate effectively-4. The rules of religious courts in civil legal systems-4.1 ..The direct referral to religious laws-4.2. The pronounces of religious courts and its importance for faithful-5. The development of Religious Arbitration Courts in Italy-6. Does religious jurisdiction another side of religious freedom? This draft was presented in occasion of the Conference “Law as Religion, Religion as Law”, held in Jerusalem, June 5th-7th, 2017, in the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and organized by The Matz Institute for Research in Jewish Law, and The Aharon Barak Center for Interdisciplinary Legal Research.

Kyriaki Topidi et al. (eds.), Religion as Empowerment: Global Legal Perspectives, Routledge, 2016

The chapter deals with the essential question of the nature of the relationship between law and religion. It is concerned with the scenarios where two elements overlap and/or collide. It is concerned with the questions surrounding the patterns and conditions for the mobilization of religion towards an expansion of one's legal rights. The discussion confirms the importance of context in defining and studying the impact of religion on legal empowerment but argues that providing more public space to religion and the exercise of religious rights is necessary but not self-sufficient. It also cautions that not all differences ought to be legally protected within the growing disorder of legal hybridity within multicultural societies.

Permutations of Order, 2009

Whatever historicity we attribute to the particularities of global social realities at the turn of the twenty-first centurywhether they are assumed to be transient episodes or heralds of a new post-millennial era-observers have remarked that we are currently witnessing consequential transfigurations of which two have provided impetus for the present volume. The first of these two transfigurations has been exposited eloquently by Jean and John L. Comarofi' who in a number of recent publications suggest that-on a global scale, among highly diverse populations, and as part of what they call "millennial capitalism"-there is "a palpable intensification in the resort to legal ways and means" (2005: 12) that involves "the displacement of the political into the legal" (ibid.: 23) and a "fetishism of legalities" (Comaroff and Comaroff 2006: 31). This process, they argue, is signalled by the growing importance of

Ecclesiastical Law Journal, 2015

The study of the legal status of different communities in the Middle Ages immediately suggests the historical value of this research. Yet, understanding the legal structures and processes which allowed for competing jurisdictions to exist in shared spaces bears extraordinary relevance to our time. The Westphalian model claimed the sovereign power of nation-states over all people in their territories, ending the traditional model of personal statusbased on different jurisdictional spaces-that had been dominant since Roman times. As the nation-state increasingly shares its sovereignty with international structures and as different communities seek to live within these shared structures, the Westphalian model is being questioned. At a time that we now call 'globalisation', states' traditional models of dealing with populations are challenged and different legal statuses emerge in competing jurisdictionsas exemplified, for instance, in the European Union's adoption of legislation on asylum and migration, including the establishment of categories of refugees and of long-term residents with specific status under EU law. A look at the past offers a better understanding of the way in which sovereign powers addressed the challenges posed by the coexistence of different communities ruled by different jurisdictions, thus providing invaluable insight into how to address similar challenges in today's world. MARÍA-TERESA GIL-BAZO Newcastle Law School

2018

We will explore these issues by comparing shared themes alongside disparate topics for each. Following introductory sessions on the definitions of law and religion, we will proceed to explore issues of origins and obligation from legal and religious perspectives. We will consider the idiosyncrasies of law and religion by examining the role intent plays in each system, and by contrasting the notions of sin and crime, leading to a further discussion on their outcome through the concepts of desert and punishment. We will then consider the topic of justice, as the ultimate goal of both religion and law, involving the theological problem of evil and addressing the possibility of a just God in a seemingly unjust world. These issues will lead to a conclusion focused on the role of interpretation in both law and religion, and how understanding the mechanisms of interpretation marks both law and religion as primarily human endeavors of cultural construction. Through these multiple investigations, we will also clarify distinctions between philosophy of law and legal theory, as well as philosophy of religion and theology, while also drawing connections between these two sets of inquiry.