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Breda on Accommodation of Sharia Law in Italy

Vito Breda (Cardiff Law School & Australian National University) has posted Sharia Law in Catholic Italy: A Non-Agnostic Model of Accommodation. The abstract follows.

The Italian Constitution and its interpretation by the Constitutional Court have led to the development of a model of accommodation of religious practices that seeks to balance a commitment to promoting religious pluralism whilst, at the same time, maintaining the neutrality of state institutions. What is distinctive about this quasi-neutral constitutional stance is the commitment to reducing the discrepancies between the legal and religious effects of key life decisions (e.g. the decision to get married). I call this stance positive secularism. In this essay, I would like to show that, thus far, positive secularism has been particularly effective in accommodating the demands of Muslim immigrants (Pacini 2001). For instance, some aspects of the Sharia law, such as marriage (including some effects of polygamous marriage) and divorce (including some effects of unilateral divorce), are already recognized by Italian international private law. The second stage for the accommodation of Sharia law in Italy is likely to be the recognition of Islam as one of Italy’s official religions. Recognition will increase the level of the Islamic communities’ autonomy and will allow for the automatic recognition of some aspects of Sharia law. In February 2010, the Italian government established the Committee for Islam, composed of representatives of Italian Islamic communities, within the Ministry of Interior Affairs. In the recent past, these types of dialogues between institutions and religious representatives have been the proxy for the official recognition of nine faiths in Italy. Waldensian Evangelical Church, the World Assemblies of God Fellowship, the Evangelical Baptist Church, the Lutheran Baptist Church, the Apostolic Church, the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-Day Saints, the Adventist Church, the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of Italy, Hebrew Communities of Italy. The chapter is divided into two sections, which is preceded by an introduction, and followed by a conclusion. The first section will discuss the judicial introduction of Sharia law via the procedure of Italian international law. The second section will explain the advantages of the recognition process and the reasons that have prevented Islamic communities from benefiting from it.

Posted on by Mark Movsesian

Campus Free Speech and Sabotage

Many CLR Forum readers will be familiar with Christian Legal Society v. Martinez, the Supreme Court’s 2010 opinion upholding the constitutionality of an “all-comers” policy at the UC-Hastings law school. The all-comers policy required student groups, including religious organizations like CLS, to open their membership to all law students, regardless of belief. By a 5-4 vote, the Court held that this policy was a reasonable, viewpoint-neutral regulation consistent with the First Amendment.

One of the arguments CLS made against the all-comers policy was that the policy made it vulnerable to sabotage by students hostile to its message. Non-Christians could join CLS precisely in order to hijack the organization and subvert its mission. The Court dismissed this concern as fanciful. There was no history of hostile takeovers of campus groups, Justice Ginsburg wrote, and one had to give law students more credit for maturity. Besides, the law school’s code of student conduct prohibited disruption of campus activities; if such things happened, the law school would surely intervene.

Justice Ginsburg’s dismissal of the possibility of student hijacking came to mind as I was reading this post on Rod Dreher’s blog. Dreher describes a recent forum on marriage organized by a student group at Columbia University. The forum was open to everyone on campus and featured speakers with traditional views, including Sherif Girgis, Lynn Wardle, and Bradford Wilcox. Even though  the forum was sold out, the room was half empty. Why? Campus Democrats had hoarded tickets, apparently in an effort to prevent people from attending and hearing the speakers. Some campus Democrats did attend briefly to hold up protest signs and walk out. Here’s one student’s view of the situation, from the Columbia student paper:

From the start, the CU Democrats seemed misinformed—if not intent on spreading misinformation—about the purpose of the forum. It was not, as some that day said, an “anti-gay marriage tirade,” but a debate on the status of the modern family. . . . [T]he issue of the future of the family is a conversation that the CU Democrats seem unwilling to allow to take place, much less to take part in, despite their physical presence.

To be sure, hoarding tickets to a one-day conference is not the same thing as taking over a group. And, depending on your view of things, you might think of what the Columbia Democrats did as a harmless stunt or even a brave gesture for equality. Still, the campus Democrats used an all-comers policy to disrupt an event sponsored by another student group and limit that group’s message from reaching its intended audience. To me, this suggests that the possibility of hostile takeovers is not as far-fetched as the Martinez Court believed.

Posted on by Mark Movsesian

Lecture, “Seeing God Through Law” (March 14)

On March 14, St. Nersess Armenian Orthodox  Seminary in Westchester will host a lecture by Professor Christopher Guzelian (Thomas Jefferson), “Seeing God Through Law.” The lecture is part of a series on law and faith. Details are here.

Posted on by JCPW

Around the Web This Week

Some interesting law & religion stories from around the web this week:

Posted on by JCPW

Sayeed, “Women and the Transmission of Religious Knowledge in Islam”

SayeedThis April, Cambridge University Press will publish Women and the Transmission of Religious Knowledge in Islam by Asma Sayeed (University of California, Los Angeles). The publisher’s description follows.

Asma Sayeed’s book explores the history of women as religious scholars from the first decades of Islam through the early Ottoman period (seventh to the seventeenth centuries). Focusing on women’s engagement with ḥadīth, this book analyzes dramatic chronological patterns in women’s ḥadīth participation in terms of developments in Muslim social, intellectual, and legal history. Drawing on primary and secondary sources, this work uncovers the historical forces that shaped Muslim women’s public participation in religious learning. In the process, it challenges two opposing views: that Muslim women have been historically marginalized in religious education, and alternately that they have been consistently empowered thanks to early role models such as ‘Ā’isha bint Abī Bakr, the wife of the Prophet Muḥammad. This book is a must-read for those interested in the history of Muslim women as well as in debates about their rights in the modern world. The intersections of this history with topics in Muslim education, the development of Sunnī orthodoxies, Islamic law, and ḥadīth studies make this work an important contribution to Muslim social and intellectual history of the early and classical eras.

Posted on by JCPW

Brownstein on the Religious Liberty of Religious Institutions

Alan E. Brownstein (University of California, Davis – School of Law) has posted Protecting the Religious Liberty of Religious Institutions. The abstract follows.

This article is a preliminary inquiry into the question of whether the freedom of the Church, as a distinct religious institution, can be justified from an American legal perspective. The first part of the article identifies respect for the individual dignity and autonomy of the person as a primary justification for providing distinctive legal protection to religious liberty. It goes on to discuss whether distinctive religious liberty protection for religious institutions can be derived from the dignitary interests of the institution’s members – and if so, whether there is some limit beyond which institutional religious liberty claims cannot be grounded in the individual dignitary interests of congregants or constituents.

The second and longer part of the Article examines whether an argument for protecting and accommodating the autonomy of religious institutions can be grounded in American history during the 1700’s and early 1800’s. The history of this period includes multiple cross currents of values and interests that very by time and region – making it difficult to reach more than tentative conclusions. However, the Protestant commitment by religious liberty proponents to the belief that each man must judge for himself on matters relating to religion, the virulent anti-Catholicism of the period, at least some of which may be attributed to fear of and antipathy toward top down ecclesiastical hierarchy, and the prevalence of anti-clerical attitudes suggest some limits to the American commitment to the freedom of the Church as an institution. Clearly, a sphere of religious liberty extended to the local congregation and to a considerable extent to democratically created and accountable ecclesiastical decision-making bodies. It may be argued, however, that Americans of this period viewed non-democratic, hierarchical religious institutional structures – that challenged the intrinsic right of individual conscience in matters of faith – to be much less deserving of respect and protection.

Posted on by Mark Movsesian · 1 Comment

NYC Sues Hasidic Shopkeepers Over Dress Codes

New York City residents have lots to worry about. The city’s outstanding debt exceeds $100 billion. The interest alone exceeds $6 billion annually. The city’s tax base continues to shrink as businesses, fed up with New York’s high rates, flee to lower-tax jurisdictions. The city’s infrastructure desperately needs an upgrade. And Hasidic shopkeepers in Brooklyn are engaged in a blatant campaign to violate customers’ human rights.

At least that’s what the city’s human rights commission argues. The commission is suing Hasidic shopkeepers who have hung signs in their windows stating, “No shorts, no barefoot, no sleeveless, no low cut neckline allowed in this store.” The commission argues that this dress code discriminates against women in violation of the city’s public accommodations law. According to the deputy commissioner, the signs are “pretty specific to women,” and requiring women to “dress modestly if they come into the store” is illegal.

Now, generally speaking, anti-discrimination laws allow public accommodations to have dress codes, as long as the codes don’t discriminate against protected classes. On its face, it’s not clear how this dress code is discriminatory. It treats men and women the same. Let’s say a barefoot woman wearing shorts walks into a store. She may be asked to leave. Let’s say a barefoot man in shorts tries to do the same thing. He also may be asked to leave. Where’s the discrimination? Now, it’s true that the stores might apply a facially neutral dress code in a discriminatory way.  So, for example, if the shopkeepers in practice excluded only women, that would be a problem. According to the stores’ lawyer, though, there’s no evidence that the stores have ever excluded any woman–or man, for that matter– for any reason.

In short, it’s not clear where the illegality lies. But there’s a deeper point. New York is a cosmopolitan city  in which people with very different lifestyles must find some way to get along. Mostly, New Yorkers do that by tolerating things that offend us. That works fine, most of the time. Maybe these religious storeowners should simply put up with dress they find immodest in the interests of a more expressive society. But is it really too much to ask someone to abide by this fairly innocuous dress code before going into a store, if that’s what the store owner wants? Is the injustice really so great that the store owner must be hauled into court and taught a lesson? Aren’t there more important problems for the city to tackle?

Sugary soft drinks, for instance.

Posted on by Marc O. DeGirolami

Conference: “Rights and Rites: A UK Perspective on Law and Religion,” at Fordham

If you are in the New York City area this coming Tuesday, February 26, you should consider attending this interesting conference sponsored by Fordham Law School’s Institute on Religion, Law, and Lawyer’s Work: “Rights and Rites: a UK Perspective on Law and Religion.”  Here’s Fordham’s description of the conference:

Ms. Archbold will critique the UK legal approach to religion, comparing the US and French constitutional approaches to religion (which are at opposite ends of the spectrum) to the UK approach. Ms. Archbold will ask whether there is a fundamental tension between the anti-discrimination and human rights approaches, while reviewing the landscape of UK and European Court of Human Rights case law, including the veil, religious symbol, school admissions, and religion and sexual orientation discrimination cases. Being from Northern Ireland, Ms. Archbold will offer insight into particular anti-discrimination and positive public duty provisions in Northern Ireland that have been demonstrated to be effective in reducing discrimination on the grounds of religion.

Speakers:

Claire Archbold, Head of Legal Services, Northern Ireland Department of Justice

Moderator:

Professor Michael W. Martin, Fordham Law School Clinical Associate Professor of Law

Register here.

Tuesday, February 26, 2013 | 12:45-1:45PM

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Guiora, “Freedom from Religion”

Freedom from ReligionThis month, Oxford University Press published Freedom from Religion: Rights and National Security, Second Edition by Amos Guiora (Quinney College of Law, University of Utah).  The publisher’s description follows.

Although many books on terrorism and religious extremism have been published in the years since 9/11, none of them written by Western authors call for the curtailment of religious freedom and freedom of expression for the sake of greater security. Issues like torture, domestic surveillance, and unlawful detentions have dominated the literature in this area, but few, if any, major scholars have questioned the vast allowances made by Western nations for the freedoms of religion and speech.

Freedom from Religion challenges the almost sacrosanct inviolability of these two civil liberties. By drawing the connection between politically-correct tolerance of extremist speech and the rise of terrorist activity, this book sets the context for its unique proposal that governments should introduce new limits on religious practice within their borders. To demonstrate the wisdom of this course, the author presents the disparate policies and security circumstances of five countries: the U.S., the UK, the Netherlands, Turkey, and Israel. The book benefits not just from the author’s own counter-terrorism experience in Israel and the U.S. but also from an international advisory group of leading scholars from all five of the countries under review.
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Oleske on Lukumi Babalu Aye

James M. Oleske Jr. (Lewis & Clark Law School) has posted Lukumi at Twenty: A Legacy of Uncertainty for Religious Liberty and Animal Welfare Laws. The abstract follows.

Twenty years after the Supreme Court’s decision in Church of the Lukumi Babalu Aye v. City of Hialeah, uncertainty reigns in the lower courts and among commentators over the issue of constitutionally compelled religious exemptions. Despite the Court’s general disavowal of such exemptions in Employment Division v. Smith, Lukumi appeared to breathe life into a potentially significant exception to Smith. That exception – which this Article calls the “selective-exemption rule” – provides that religious exemptions may still be required by the Free Exercise Clause when the government has selectively made available other exemptions to a law.

This Article addresses the key unresolved questions about the scope of the selective-exemption rule and challenges the received reading of the leading circuit court decision interpreting the rule. Relying heavily upon that reading, prominent religious liberty advocates have been pressing for a remarkably broad Read more