Posted on by Marc O. DeGirolami

Delsol, “The Insurrection of Particularities, Or, How the Universal Comes Undone”

This past July, the Center co-hosted a conference in Rome, “Liberalism’s Limits: Religious Exemptions and Hate Speech.” with our longtime partner, Università di Roma LUMSA. The conference, which addressed the challenges that religious exemptions and hate-speech regulations pose for liberalism, was divided into three workshops, for which participants submitted short reflection papers.

The distinguished political historian and philosopher, Chantal Delsol, gave a keynote address for the conference. We are delighted to publish her talk here. The address is in French, and I link to the original below. With Professor Delsol’s permission, I have translated it for our English speaking readers (the footnotes remain in the original).

Chantal Delsol’s original piece in French can be found hereDownload

The Insurrection of Particularities, Or, How the Universal Comes Undone

Rome, July 8, 2022

Chantal Delsol

1.

On October 18, 2017, the French National Assembly adopted the State Law on Religious Neutrality. Article 11 provides that an accommodation for reasons of religion may be granted if 5 criteria are satisfied: the request is serious; the requested accommodation respects the equality of men and women, as well as the principle of religious neutrality of the State; the accommodation is not excessively constraining; and the requester has actively participated in finding a solution. By the same token, there will be no accommodation with respect to the obligation of all employees of the State to work with their faces uncovered and without wearing any religious sign.

One sees here the extent to which the legislator struggles to preserve as far as possible State neutrality tied to secularism, without actually achieving it, and doing so less and less. We are today on a kind of slope, which is the subject of our conference today: that which was accorded an exception more and more becomes the rule. The Quebecois speak of “reasonable accommodations,” to underline well that one should not surpass the limits of good sense. The example is cited in France of the authorization given for prayer in the streets which stops traffic. So, too, laws forbidding the scheduling of exams for students during the holidays of various religions, which made one journalist say, “soon only February 29 will be left to schedule exams.” The question is in fact posed about the diversity and plurality of exemptions, but that is only a subsidiary question consequent on others. These concessions, which raise a vision of equality solely constituted of privileges, interrogate our vision of the universal, and finally our way of being a society.

Our societies appear more and more to be aggregations of minorities disparate in every respect (they may be social, sexual, religious, or cultural, etc.). And everything happens as if the goal of governments is nothing more than to establish equality among these groups, which, always claiming and becoming indignant about not obtaining enough, monopolize public space. At this point, leaving behind Tocqueville who feared a tyranny of the majority, we could, as Philippe Raynaud put it, [1] fall into a tyranny of minorities.

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Posted on by Mark Movsesian

A New Collection of Essays on Law and Religion

This new collection of essays from Cambridge, Law as Religion, Religion as Law, looks interesting. The basic thrust of the volume is that the demands of law and religion do not oppose one another but, in fact, overlap and complement one another. That’s certainly true sometimes! The editors are scholars David Flatto and Benjamin Porat, both of Hebrew University. The publisher’s description follows:

The conventional approach to law and religion assumes that these are competing domains, which raises questions about the freedom of, and from, religion; alternate commitments of religion and human rights; and respective jurisdictions of civil and religious courts. This volume moves beyond this competitive paradigm to consider law and religion as overlapping and interrelated frameworks that structure the social order, arguing that law and religion share similar properties and have a symbiotic relationship. Moreover, many legal systems exhibit religious characteristics, informing their notions of authority, precedent, rituals and canonical texts, and most religions invoke legal concepts or terminology. The contributors address this blurring of law and religion in the contexts of political theology, secularism, church-state conflicts, and the foundational idea of divine law. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

Posted on by Mark Movsesian · 1 Comment

Next Month in Rome: “Liberalism’s Limits”

Next month in Rome, we’ll celebrate 10 years of cooperation with our colleagues at Universita LUMSA with the latest in our conference series on comparative law and religion: “Liberalism’s Limits: Religious Exemption and Hate Speech.” (Hard to believe we’ve been doing this for 10 years)! The conference description is below and details are here: If you’re in Rome, please stop by and say hello!

Liberal democracies historically have prized autonomy and freedom as fundamental political commitments. In doing so, they also have emphasized the individual’s freedom of religion and freedom of speech as sitting at the core of their political systems. Yet in religious exemption — the right of individuals to receive an accommodation from complying with generally applicable law on the basis of religious scruple — and in what some in these polities call “hate speech” – speech conveying deeply insulting, vilifying, discriminatory views against a target group – liberal regimes face serious challenges to their own core principles. This conference will examine the problems posed by these issues for the continuing viability of liberalism in Western democracies.

Posted on by Mark Movsesian

Movsesian on Courts’ Responses to COVID Restrictions

I’m happy to announce that my essay, “Law, Religion, and the COVID-19 Crisis,” is now available in the Journal of Law and Religion (Cambridge). The essay discusses courts’ responses to COVID restrictions on public worship worldwide, and what the response of American courts indicates about our deep polarization in this country. Here’s the abstract:

This essay explores judicial responses to legal restrictions on worship during the COVID-19 pandemic and draws two lessons, one comparative and one relating specifically to U.S. law. As a comparative matter, courts across the globe have approached the problem in essentially the same way, through intuition and balancing. This has been the case regardless of what formal test applies, the proportionality test outside the United States, which expressly calls for judges to weigh the relative costs and benefits of a restriction, or the Employment Division v. Smith test inside the United States, which rejects judicial line-drawing and balancing in favor of predictable results. Judges have reached different conclusions about the legality of restrictions, of course, but doctrinal nuances have made little apparent difference. With respect to the United States specifically, the pandemic has revealed deep divisions about religion and religious freedom, among other things—divisions that have inevitably influenced judicial attitudes toward restrictions on worship. The COVID-19 crisis has revealed a cultural and political rift that makes consensual resolution of conflicts over religious freedom problematic, and perhaps impossible, even during a once-in-a-century pandemic.

Posted on by Mark Movsesian

Law, Religion, and the Covid Crisis

I have a new draft on SSRN, “Law, Religion, and the Covid Crisis,” comparing how courts across the globe have approached restrictions on public worship and exploring what the cases reveal about social divisions, especially in the United States. Here’s the abstract:

This essay explores judicial responses to legal restrictions on worship during the COVID pandemic and draws two lessons, one comparative and one relating specifically to US law. As a comparative matter, courts across the globe have approached the problem in essentially the same way, through intuition and balancing. This has been the case regardless of what formal test applies, the proportionality test outside the US, which expressly calls for judges to weigh the relative costs and benefits of a restriction, or the Employment Division v. Smith test inside the US, which rejects judicial line-drawing and balancing in favor of predictable results. Judges have reached different conclusions about the legality of restrictions, of course, but doctrinal nuances have made little apparent difference. With respect to the US, specifically, the pandemic has revealed deep divisions about religion and religious freedom, among other things—divisions that have inevitably influenced judicial attitudes toward restrictions on worship. The COVID crisis has revealed a cultural and political rift that makes consensual resolution of conflicts over religious freedom problematic, and perhaps impossible, even during a once-in-a-lifetime pandemic.

The essay will appear in the forthcoming volume of the Journal of Law and Religion. Comments welcome!

Posted on by Mark Movsesian

Movsesian Named Co-Editor of the Journal of Law and Religion

We are delighted to announce that the Journal of Law and Religion (Cambridge University Press) has named Center Co-Director Mark Movsesian to its board of editors. Professor Movsesian will assist the interdisciplinary, peer-review journal in selecting and developing articles for publication.

“I am grateful for the invitation and am delighted to join the Journal‘s editorial board,” Professor Movsesian said. “I look forward to helping the journal continue to explore issues at the intersection of law and religion, both domestically, in the United States, and across the globe.”

More information about the Journal and its editorial board is here.

Posted on by Mark Movsesian

Moscow State University Roundtable

I was delighted to speak at a roundtable on law and religion at Lomonosov Moscow State University this morning, along with faculty colleagues from Russia, Greece, Canada, Italy and Israel. Comparative studies add so much to the understanding of church-state issues, and it is always striking how the same issues come up in so many cultures–though not the same answers. The questions from other scholars and the student participants were great. Thanks for Prof. Gayane Davidyan at Lomonosov for inviting me!

UPDATE: For anyone interested, Lomonosov has now posted the YouTube Video of the event:

Posted on by Mark Movsesian

Law & Religion Roundtable at Lomonosov-Moscow State (Nov. 25)

A programming note: on Wednesday, November 25, I will participate in a roundtable on law and religion sponsored by the Faculty of Law at Lomonosov Moscow State University. The roundtable, organized by Lomonosov Professor Gayane Davidyan, will take place online starting at 17:30 Moscow time. Visitors are welcome. Please use the You Tube link here. The roster for the roundtable, along with the titles of the presentations, is below. Stop by and say hello!

  • Mark Movsesian, Frederick A. Whitney Professor, Co-Director of Center for Law & Religion, St. John’s Law School, United States, Church-State Cases at the US Supreme Court in 2020
  • Lina Papadopoulou, Associate Professor, Law School, Academic Coordinator of the Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence “European Constitution and Religion”, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece, God and the Constitution in a country (Greece) with a prevailing religion
  • Andrea Pin, Associate Professor, Department of Public, International and Community Law, University of Padua, Italy, The Constitution as an ID
  • Kathryn Chan, Associate Professor, Faculty of Law, University of Victoria, Canada, The source and scope of religious freedom in Canada
  • Xavier Barre, Ph.D in Law, Avocat au barreau de Paris, Member of New York Bar and Advocat of Moscow Regional bar
  • Anton Kanevsky, Associate Professor of Higher School of Economics, Moscow, Russia, Attorney in Jerusalem, The Divine Name in Earthly Affairs: Non-specific Talmudic Legal Principles and Israeli Practice
  • Gayane Davidyan, Associate Professor, School of Law, Lomonosov Moscow State University, Director Center of Law and Religion, Can God be Constitutional?
Posted on by Mark Movsesian

Laicite in Quebec

Je Me Souviens?

When profoundly Catholic societies go off religion, they really go off religion. Religion doesn’t become simply a matter of indifference; people seem to feel they must uproot religion entirely from public life, in order to compensate for and distance themselves from the benighted ways of the past.

Societies need some common identity to bind them, though, and when shared religion is no longer an option, they substitute other things. In a First Things essay this week (“Canada Divided Against Itself”), David Koyzis observes this dynamic at work in Quebec. Once a famously Catholic place, he says, since the Quiet Revolution of the 1960s, Quebec has become an overwhelmingly secular society. (Strangely, they have kept a very Catholic-looking flag (above)). The province’s motto may be “Je me souviens,” but the Quebecois are trying to forget all about their religious tradition. What unites the province today, he says, is not Catholicism, but Quebecois national identity:

Ironically, despite the secularizing impact of the Quiet Revolution, Québec has not abandoned religious faith; it has simply redirected that faith toward a state-centered nationalism, around which the province’s main parties are largely united. What was once a French Canadian nationalism bent on defending a Catholic society whose traditions harked back to pre-revolutionary France has become Québec nationalism, which looks to the state to protect the province’s linguistic majority in a sea of English-speaking jurisdictions. If protecting this majority comes at the expense of minority interests within the province, then so be it.

As evidence, Koyzis adduces a new law that prohibits public employees from wearing religious symbols–crucifixes, kippas, hijabs–while on the job. The idea, he says, is to encourage the Quebecois to think of themselves, not as members of distinct religious communities, but simply as Quebecois. This is the same reasoning behind the ban on burkas in public places, and the ban on “conspicuous” religious symbols in public schools, in France.

Koyzis says that the forceful laicite of Quebec is in tension with the multiculturalism that animates Canadian public life outside the province. I don’t know enough about Canada to evaluate that argument. But his point about nationalism as a substitute for religion seems sound. You can read the whole piece here.

Posted on by Mark Movsesian

A Comparative Study of Religion and Politics

Politics in America increasingly divides on the question of religion. Religious Americans tend to gravitate to the Republican Party; secular Americans, to the Democrats. Religion also figures prominently in the politics of other countries. Later this year, Routledge will release a collection of essays on the ways religion and politics intersect across the world: The Routledge Handbook to Religion and Political Parties. The editor is Jeffrey Haynes (London Metropolitan University). Here’s the description from the Routledge website:

As religion and politics become ever more intertwined, relationships between religion and political parties are of increasing global political significance. This handbook responds to that development, providing important results of current research involving religion and politics, focusing on: democratisation, democracy, party platform formation, party moderation and secularisation, social constituency representation and interest articulation.

Covering core issues, new debates, and country case studies, the handbook provides a comprehensive overview of fundamentals and new directions in the subject. Adopting a comparative approach, it examines the relationships between religion and political parties in a variety of contexts, regions and countries with a focus on Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Judaism and Hinduism. Contributions cover such topics as:

Religion, secularisation and modernisation

Religious fundamentalism and terrorism

The role of religion in conflict resolution and peacebuilding

Religion and its connection to state, democratisation and democracy, and

Regional case studies covering Asia, the Americas, Europe, Sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East and North Africa.

This comprehensive handbook provides crucial information for students, researchers and professionals researching the topics of politics, religion, comparative politics, secularism, religious movements, political parties and interest groups, and religion and sociology.