Legal Religion: Ethical Norms and Demands of Justice

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.

2012

Abstract: This introduction provides a preface to the Pepperdine Law Review symposium from the Third Annual Religious Legal Theory Conference on" The Competing Claims of Law & Religion: Who Should Influence Whom." As the introduction notes, the relationship between law and religion is both fraught with tension but also provides great opportunity. In so doing, the introduction sketches some of the varied responses to conflicts between law and religion, providing a brief overview of the papers included in the symposium issue.

A paper centering around religion and the injustices that surround certain religious beliefs.

Fakta: Forum Aktual Ahwal Al-Syakhsiyah, 2024

A Brief Comparison of Religious Legal Systems. Religion and law have a close relationship, where religious law provides a moral basis for social order. Religious legal systems have normative characteristics and function as a guideline for their adherents. However, in the increasingly secular modern world, the existence of religious law faces various challenges. Although some religious legal systems still survive, their implementation has different characteristics and often faces challenges of interpretation and adaptation. This study aims to analyze the comparison of religious legal systems in various parts of the world. By examining various sources of religious law, this study will identify similarities and differences in basic principles, the application of law in everyday life, and the challenges faced by each religious legal system in the modern context.

Immanent Frame Blog, 2019

In this online review essay I argue that religion poses special challenges as a category of law; and these challenges arise not simply because religion is difficult, if not impossible, to define nor because legal agents deploy the category in strategic, prejudicial, or inconsistent ways. Religion is a uniquely thorny category of law, I will insist, because the use of that category—in legislatures, courtrooms, and mediascapes—evokes (at least) five distinct discursive contradictions, opposing ways of representing and understanding those things that are supposed to be protected or regulated by law: contradictions of communality, authority, acquisition, imagination, and independence.

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.

Social Analysis, 2009

Religion has always been intimately connected to law. Conversely, modern secular law, born of the separation of lex naturae from lex dei, has always been deeply theological. However, with transformations in the construction of the nation-state and changes in the sociopolitical scaffolding of the global order, the mutual infusion of law and religion appears to be extending both in scope and in substance-notwithstanding the ever more strident assertion of secularism by some nation-states. Counter-intuitively, the law itself appears to be ever more suffused with the sacral, while, across the planet, the sacral is reconstructing constitutional jurisprudence, administrative law, and much more besides. How do we account for this, for the rise of expansive cultures of theo-legality? Where is it leading? And with what implications?

Religion and law. How important to each is the concept of justice? And how old, is the concept of justice? And when did it come to exist? This article doesn't answer all those questions. But it gets a to the point, where we begin to understand the importance humanity's long standing quest for justice has -- and should have -- on our present and future times.

Osgoode Hall Law Journal, 2022

This article addresses issues surrounding the way in which law apprehends religion in the judicial context. The first part of the article proposes the notion of legal fiction as a theoretical lens through which to view the law’s apprehension of religion. It is argued that this highlights and articulates a useful set of ideas about the social-symbolic process of the law’s interaction with religion. The second part of the article applies these theoretical ideas through an in-depth discussion of three cases: Ktunaxa Nation v. British Columbia, Multani v. Commission scolaire Marguerite-Bourgeoys, and Bentley v. Anglican Synod of the Diocese of New Westminster. The discussion of these cases demonstrates the descriptive and critical possibilities of reframing the law’s apprehension of religion in terms of legal fiction.