Relations between state law and religion in Finland

Religious Rules, State Law, and Normative Pluralism - A Comparative Overview, 2016

The article explores the extent of application of religious rules according to the law in Estonia. It is argued that religious rules are applied both de jure and de facto in Estonia, for example, within contractual freedom between parties, in the framework of exemptions from generally applicable laws and autonomy of religious communities. There is a certain amount of individual and collective freedom to choose to live life according to one's conscience and religious rules.

The paper explains the State-Church relationship in Finland from legal, social, political, and historical perspective. The paper aim is to explore all the important contemporary legal-political and social-political issues with the historical background in the field. The most important thesis is that the current state of things between the State and the Church is based on an idea of a “friendly relationship”.

Religion & Human Rights, 2011

The Library of Essays on Law and Religion, Vol. II, 2013

2017

In this paper, I will briefly refer to the terms: Secular, post-secular and multi-cultural space. Afterward, I will examine how civil and religious law interact to each other, when and if are applied simultaneously or not in the European territory. In specific, I will use the case of marriage and divorce to discuss the operation of the civil and the Christian, Jewish and Muslim religious law in a secular, post-secular and multi-cultural European environment. Finally, I will proceed into a conclusive suggestion to which of these three theoretical categories of space is most suitable today and why.

Stato, Chiese e Pluralismo Confessionale, 2016

Paper, peer reviewed, for: Liber amicorum Tito Ballarino , Institut Suisse Droit Compare . SUMMARY : 1. Preliminary Remarks - 2. Religious values and nationality - 3. Electio iuris and religious values - 4. Public policy and religious values - 5. The Conventional approach - 6. Conclusive Remarks. Abstract: The wide evolution of private international law is currently recalling attention to the general aspects of the discipline. Europeanization and globalisation of sources of private international law do not preclude the chance that conflict of laws should also deal with individual identities. To the extent that the European systems have hitherto offered to the application of foreign laws, we are faced with the problem of survival in Europe of an idea of the personality of laws. In fact it’s generally accepted that conflict of laws faces the individual identities of people involved in international relations. Cultural identity may be considered collective and individual at the same ti...

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.

Temenos - Nordic Journal of Comparative Religion

This article examines how religious freedom has been implemented and interpreted in Finland over the last hundred years. Moving chronologically, I explore the most crucial developmental phases in religious freedom legislation and public discussion. The Act on the Freedom of Religion was only introduced after Finland’s independence in 1917 and entered into force at the beginning of 1923. The article shows themes that provoked much discussion in the 1920s and were interestingly repeated in the debate in the 1960s. The question of the relationship between the church and state was at the core of the Finnish public debate on freedom of religion from the outset. A similar discussion again became visible at the turn of the twenty-first century in connection with the basic rights reform and processing of the new Act on the Freedom of Religion. The strength of the Finnish state church system in society is still illustrated by the fact that the Act on the Freedom of Religion of 2003 did not r...