Perfect Strangers: The Study of Law as Religion (working copy)

2015

Peter W Edge. "The very expression "law and" paradoxically signifies both law's welcoming of other disciplines and its continued separation from them" (Balkin, 1996 at 950). Introduction. John Witte has recently surveyed the field of law and religion within the United States (Witte, 2012). His "interim report" makes essential reading for anyone interested in scholarship from this globally significant set of jurisdictions. My focus in this chapter is partly on contemporary European scholarship, albeit only that part available in English, but also more specifically on the contribution that legal scholarship can make to interdisciplinary work on the interaction of law and religion. I begin by discussing what sort of discipline law is, and how it can interact with other disciplines. I then attempt to consider the contours of legal scholarship as they may appear to an outsider, seeking to bring out the key characteristics which need to be considered when placing a piece of legal scholarship on law and religion in its disciplinary context. I conclude by a brief consideration on what to expect from a legal scholar during interdisciplinary dialogue on law and religion. What sort of discipline is law? Posner argued, in a provocatively titled article, for "[t]he decline of law as an autonomous discipline, 1962-1987" (Posner, 1987; see also Posner, 1988). Schlag expressed the same scepticism by a lively comparison of the discipline to law to that of phrenology (Schlag, 1997). One may be sceptical about the autonomy of legal scholarship without thereby invalidating the existence of a community of legal scholars (van Zandt, 2003), or necessarily concluding that there is nothing distinctive about the work of such scholars (Bix, 2003). Nonetheless, the standing of law as a distinctive discipline is not uncontested. That said, I follow Vick in seeing a core to the academic study of law which "broadly corresponds with a doctrinal approach involving the use of particular interpretative tools and critical techniques in order to systematise and evaluate legal rules and generate recommendations as to what legal rules should be" (Vick, 2004 at 165). Using the United States terminology, this will be termed Langdellian, after the influential Dean of Harvard Law School, although scholars within this tradition frequently do not identify themselves explicitly (Posner, 1988). Within this tradition, especially in the common law, Anglophone, world, the legal scholar begins with the study of authoritative (typically public domain) legal texts, and then moves from knowledge of those texts to apply "the power of logical discrimination and argumentation that came from close and critical study of them" (Posner, 1987 at 763). The latter is crucial to understanding even that Langdellian scholarship which focuses on authoritative texts very closely. Such scholars rarely simply aim to summarise the current state of play in the authoritative sources. Rather "the Langdellian scholar [aims] to discover

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?

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.

Cambridge University Press, 2016. Edited by Frank Cranmer, Mark Hill, Celia Kenny and Russell Sandberg. Since the early 1990s, politicians, policymakers, the media and academics have increasingly focused on religion, noting the significant increase in the number of cases involving religion. As a result, law and religion has become a specific area of study. The work of Professor Norman Doe at Cardiff University has served as a catalyst for this change, especially through the creation of the LLM in Canon Law in 1991 (the first degree of its type since the time of the Reformation) and the Centre for Law and Religion in 1998 (the first of its kind in the UK). Published to mark the twenty-fifth anniversary of the LLM in Canon Law and to pay tribute to Professor Doe's achievements so far, this volume reflects upon the interdisciplinary development of law and religion. Table of Contents Foreword Lord Williams of Oystermouth 1. Renaissance and re-engagement: Norman Doe's achievement in the discipline of law and religion Mark Hill, QC Part I. Conceptual Foundations and Historical Development: 2. Law, religion and the curve of reason Celia Kenny 3. Legal authority in canon law: cases from the notebook of a medieval lawyer Richard H. Helmholz 4. Trust and conscience in early English law David Seipp 5. A sociological theory of religious law Russell Sandberg Part II. Government and Ministry: 6. The rise of ecclesiastical quasi-legislation Paul Colton 7. The development and influence of Anglican canon law Anthony Jeremy 8. Ecclesiastical regulation and secular law: a comparative examination Frank Cranmer Part III. Doctrine, Liturgy and Rites: 9. Justice and mercy: canon law and the sacrament of penance Robert Ombres, OP 10. Pardon and peace – rights and responsibilities: persuasion not compulsion Edward Morgan 11. Public law and traditional faith Norman Solomon Part IV. The Interface of Religious Law and Civil Law: 12. Who needs freedom of religion? Silvio Ferrari 13. Religion and human rights: principles and practice Carolyn Evans and Timnah Rachel Baker 14. Coercion, oaths and conscience: conceptual confusion in the right to freedom of religion or belief Alison Mawhinney 15. Religious freedom and the law Brenda Hale Part V. Conclusions: 16. The role of religion in building political communities Linda Hogan 17. The interdisciplinary growth of law and religion John Witte, Jr 18. New directions in the confluence of law and religion Celia Kenny.

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.

The Confluence of Law and Religion: Interdisciplinary Reflections on the Work of Norman Doe, ed. Frank Cranmer, et al., 2016

Welsh jurist and Anglican theologian Norman Doe has pioneered the modern study of comparative "Christian law"-analyzing the wide variety of internal religious legal systems governing Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant churches worldwide. For him, law is a fundamental but underutilized instrument of Christian identity, denominationalism, and ecumenism, and he shows the many areas of overlap and collaboration even within and between Christian traditions that have sharp differences on other matters. This Article offers an appreciative analysis of the development of Professor Doe's scholarship, and situates his work within the broader global field of law and religion studies.

SSRN Electronic Journal, 2013

How can we account for the differing popular images of attorney in various countries? One way of doing so may be to bring a paradigm developed in religious studies to examine the most publically accessible and prototypical venue for attorneys, the courtroom. Specifically, applying the model of critical spatial studies developed by Lefebvre and Soja in order to examine religious ritual space to bear on a different kind of ritual space, the courtroom, its structure, organization, and use may illuminate both societal understandings of how the law relates to the citizen, but also inform the differing perception and status of lawyers in the United States, Britain, and China. When we use the expression "religion and law", we tend to speak about a few related but distinct concerns: jurisprudence about religion, specific controversies involving conflict between religious practices and law, and the internal law of given religion. In this paper, I set out another way to address "religion and law", via using heuristics and paradigms derived from the field of religious studies to address and compare the similarities, and differences, of various legal systems, with a view towards how this might impact differing levels of esteem for, and perceptions about the degree of civility and quality of legal ethics in these various systems. In effect, then, setting out a way of examining law as religion 1. Law as Religion? The notion of addressing law as religion may seem counter-intuitive to many, at first, given our long established tradition of separation of church and state. Yet, to people from non-Christian traditions, both here in the U.S. and abroad, such a notion is not the least troublesome. Consider, for example, that for our Muslim community, Shari'a law is an important part of their religion, directing how and when they perform their daily devotions, the way they dress, the foods they can, and cannot, consume and, via Shari'a courts, instituted here in the U.S. in the mode of arbitration boards, a means to resolve disputes within their community. Similarly, those who practice Judaism are sometimes called "The People of the Law", and the provisions of Halakah, and the institution of the Beth Din-Rabbinical Courts-provide a very similar level of strictures and guides for living in accordance with their relgion, as well as tools for dispute resolution. To a lesser extent, any Roman Catholic who has ever sought out an annulment from a Canon Law Court, in order to enter a new marriage within the bounds of the church, can relate to the idea of law as an expression, and outgrowth, of religion. Even historically, we find law having its origination from religion. The stele of the Code

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.