Constitutionalism, Democracy and Religious Freedom PDF Download

Author: Hans-Martien ten Napel
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1317236912
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 170

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Book Description
In both Europe and North America it can be argued that the associational and institutional dimensions of the right to freedom of religion or belief are increasingly coming under pressure. This book demonstrates why a more classical understanding of the idea of a liberal democracy can allow for greater respect for the right to freedom of religion or belief. The book examines the major direction in which liberal democracy has developed over the last fifty years and contends that this is not the most legitimate type of liberal democracy for religiously divided societies. Drawing on theoretical developments in the field of transnational constitutionalism, Hans-Martien ten Napel argues that redirecting the concept and practice of liberal democracy toward the more classical notion of limited, constitutional government, with a considerable degree of autonomy for civil society organizations would allow greater religious pluralism. The book shows how, in a postsecular and multicultural context, modern sources of constitutionalism and democracy, supplemented by premodern, transcendental legitimation, continue to provide the best means of legitimating Western constitutional and political orders.

Author: Jean L. Cohen
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231540736
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 465

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Book Description
Polarization between political religionists and militant secularists on both sides of the Atlantic is on the rise. Critically engaging with traditional secularism and religious accommodationism, this collection introduces a constitutional secularism that robustly meets contemporary challenges. It identifies which connections between religion and the state are compatible with the liberal, republican, and democratic principles of constitutional democracy and assesses the success of their implementation in the birthplace of political secularism: the United States and Western Europe. Approaching this issue from philosophical, legal, historical, political, and sociological perspectives, the contributors wage a thorough defense of their project's theoretical and institutional legitimacy. Their work brings fresh insight to debates over the balance of human rights and religious freedom, the proper definition of a nonestablishment norm, and the relationship between sovereignty and legal pluralism. They discuss the genealogy of and tensions involving international legal rights to religious freedom, religious symbols in public spaces, religious arguments in public debates, the jurisdiction of religious authorities in personal law, and the dilemmas of religious accommodation in national constitutions and public policy when it violates international human rights agreements or liberal-democratic principles. If we profoundly rethink the concepts of religion and secularism, these thinkers argue, a principled adjudication of competing claims becomes possible.

Author: Francois Venter
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
ISBN: 1785361627
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
This topical book examines how the goals of constitutionalism – good and fair government – are addressed at a time when the multi-religious composition of countries’ populations has never before been so pronounced. How should governments, courts and officials deal with this diversity? The widely accepted principle of treating others as you wish them to treat you and the universal recognition of human dignity speak against preferential treatment of any religion. Faced with severe challenges, this leads many authorities to seek refuge in secular neutrality. Set against the backdrop of globalized constitutionalism in a post-secular era, Francois Venter proposes engaged objectivity as an alternative to unachievable neutrality. Bringing together the history of church and state, the emergence of contemporary constitutionalism, constitutional comparison and the realities of globalization, this book offers a fresh perspective on the direction in which solutions to difficulties brought about by religious pluralism might be sought. Its wide-ranging comparative analyses and perspectives based on materials published in various languages provide a clear exposition of the range of religious issues with which the contemporary state is increasingly being confronted. Providing a compact but thorough historical and theoretical exposition, this book is an invaluable resource for students, constitutional scholars, judges and legal practitioners.

Author: Aslı Ü. Bâli
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9781107694545
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
What role do and should constitutions play in mitigating intense disagreements over the religious character of a state? And what kind of constitutional solutions might reconcile democracy with the type of religious demands raised in contemporary democratising or democratic states? Tensions over religion-state relations are gaining increasing salience in constitution writing and rewriting around the world. This book explores the challenge of crafting a democratic constitution under conditions of deep disagreement over a state's religious or secular identity. It draws on a broad range of relevant case studies of past and current constitutional debates in Europe, Asia, Africa and the Middle East, and offers valuable lessons for societies soon to embark on constitution drafting or amendment processes where religion is an issue of contention.

Author: Christopher L. Eisgruber
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 067426326X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 346

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Book Description
Religion has become a charged token in a politics of division. In disputes about faith-based social services, public money for religious schools, the Pledge of Allegiance, Ten Commandments monuments, the theory of evolution, and many other topics, angry contestation threatens to displace America's historic commitment to religious freedom. Part of the problem, the authors argue, is that constitutional analysis of religious freedom has been hobbled by the idea of "a wall of separation" between church and state. That metaphor has been understood to demand that religion be treated far better than other concerns in some contexts, and far worse in others. Sometimes it seems to insist on both contrary forms of treatment simultaneously. Missing has been concern for the fair and equal treatment of religion. In response, the authors offer an understanding of religious freedom called Equal Liberty. Equal Liberty is guided by two principles. First, no one within the reach of the Constitution ought to be devalued on account of the spiritual foundation of their commitments. Second, all persons should enjoy broad rights of free speech, personal autonomy, associative freedom, and private property. Together, these principles are generous and fair to a wide range of religious beliefs and practices. With Equal Liberty as their guide, the authors offer practical, moderate, and appealing terms for the settlement of many hot-button issues that have plunged religious freedom into controversy. Their book calls Americans back to the project of finding fair terms of cooperation for a religiously diverse people, and it offers a valuable set of tools for working toward that end.

Author: Susanna Mancini
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
ISBN: 1786439298
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 464

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Book Description
Constitutions and Religion is the first major reference work in the emerging field of comparative constitutional law and religion. It offers a nuanced array of perspectives on various models for the treatment of religion in domestic and supranational legal orders.

Author: Marc O. DeGirolami
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674074157
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 362

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Book Description
When it comes to questions of religion, legal scholars face a predicament. They often expect to resolve dilemmas according to general principles of equality, neutrality, or the separation of church and state. But such abstractions fail to do justice to the untidy welter of values at stake. Offering new views of how to understand and protect religious freedom in a democracy, The Tragedy of Religious Freedom challenges the idea that matters of law and religion should be referred to far-flung theories about the First Amendment. Examining a broad array of contemporary and more established Supreme Court rulings, Marc DeGirolami explains why conflicts implicating religious liberty are so emotionally fraught and deeply contested. Twenty-first-century realities of pluralism have outrun how scholars think about religious freedom, DeGirolami asserts. Scholars have not been candid enough about the tragic nature of the conflicts over religious liberty—the clash of opposing interests and aspirations they entail, and the limits of human reason to resolve intractable differences. The Tragedy of Religious Freedom seeks to turn our attention from abstracted, absolute values to concrete, historical realities. Social history, characterized by the struggles of lawyers engaged in the details of irreducible conflicts, represents the most promising avenue to negotiate legal conflicts over religion. In this volume, DeGirolami offers an approach to understanding religious liberty that is neither rigidly systematic nor ad hoc, but a middle path grounded in a pluralistic and historically informed perspective.

Author: Carl H. Esbeck
Publisher: University of Missouri Press
ISBN: 0826274366
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 460

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Book Description
On May 10, 1776, the Second Continental Congress sitting in Philadelphia adopted a Resolution which set in motion a round of constitution making in the colonies, several of which soon declared themselves sovereign states and severed all remaining ties to the British Crown. In forming these written constitutions, the delegates to the state conventions were forced to address the issue of church-state relations. Each colony had unique and differing traditions of church-state relations rooted in the colony’s peoples, their country of origin, and religion. This definitive volume, comprising twenty-one original essays by eminent historians and political scientists, is a comprehensive state-by-state account of disestablishment in the original thirteen states, as well as a look at similar events in the soon-to-be-admitted states of Vermont, Tennessee, and Kentucky. Also considered are disestablishment in Ohio (the first state admitted from the Northwest Territory), Louisiana and Missouri (the first states admitted from the Louisiana Purchase), and Florida (wrestled from Spain under U.S. pressure). The volume makes a unique scholarly contribution by recounting in detail the process of disestablishment in each of the colonies, as well as religion’s constitutional and legal place in the new states of the federal republic.

Author: Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192550616
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 480

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Book Description
Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde (1930-2019) was one of Europe's foremost legal scholars and political thinkers. As a scholar of constitutional law and a judge on Germany's Federal Constitutional Court (1983-1996), Böckenförde was a major contributor to contemporary debates in legal and political theory, to the conceptual framework of the modern state and its presuppositions, and to contested political issues such as the constitutional status of the state of emergency, citizenship rights, bioethical politics, and the challenges of European integration. His writings have shaped not only academic but also wider public debates from the 1950s to the present, to an extent that few European scholars can match. As a federal constitutional judge and holder of a trusted public office, Böckenförde has influenced the way academics and citizens think about law and politics. During his tenure on the Court, several path-breaking decisions for the Federal Republic of Germany were handed down, including decisions on the deployment of missiles, the law on political parties, the regulation of abortion, and the process of European integration. This second volume in the first representative edition in English of Böckenförde's writings brings together his essays on religion, law, and democracy. The volume is organized in five sections: I. the Catholic Church and Political Order; II. State and Secularity; III. the Theology of Law and its Relation to Political Theory; IV. Norms and the Principle of Human Dignity; and V. Excerpts from a biographical interview. Sections I, II, III, and IV are preceded by an editors' introduction to the articles as well as running editorial commentary to the work.

Author: Jasper Doomen
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1793618399
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 207

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Book Description
This edited volume is focused on the issue of freedom of religion from various perspectives, inquiring whether freedom of religion may be realized non-neutrally, and whether a secular state in particular may accomplish this goal.