Posted on by Mark Movsesian

First Things on the Destruction of Khachkars

First Things’s always worthwhile  On the Square blog has an interesting post on the destruction of Armenian carved stone crosses, or khachkars, in Turkey and Azerbaijan. The khachkar (literally, “cross-stone”) is a traditional Armenian art form; an analogue would be the familiar Celtic high cross. Crosses have a central place in Armenian Christian iconography, and khachkars, which can reach a few feet in height, dot the landscape in Armenia and in other places where Armenians have lived. Khachkars appear in cemeteries, in church courtyards, in homes, on roadsides; really,  anywhere.

Two years ago, UNESCO added the art of khachkar carving to the list of intangible cultural heritage meriting special protection in international law. As the First Things post makes clear, however, Turkey and Azerbaijan have undertaken to destroy khachkars that exist in those countries:

The last of the largest collections of khachkars, the Armenian Cemetery in Jugha in the Azerbaijani exclave of Nakhchivan, was purposefully annihilated in 2005 after several years of intermittent Read more

Posted on by Marc O. DeGirolami

Troy, “Christian Approaches to International Affairs”

Jodok Troy (University of Innsbruck) has written a book which will interest international studies and human rights scholars: Christian Approaches to International Affairs (Palgrave Macmillan 2012).  I am not certain which variety of  “Realism” the author discusses, but the “English School” may refer to the loosely associational, non-fully-cosmopolitan system once described by Hedley Bull.  The publisher’s description follows.

Troy analyses how the understanding of religion in Realism and the English School helps in working toward the greater good in international relations, and studies religion within the overall framework of international affairs, integrating and framing religion, as well as religion within the field of peace studies.
Posted on by Mark Movsesian

State Department’s Religious Freedom Report: All Hat, No Cattle?

Georgetown’s Thomas Farr assesses the latest State Department Annual Report on International Religious Freedom, issued in Washington this week with much fanfare by Secretary Hillary Clinton and Ambassador-at-Large Suzan Johnson Cook. The report, Farr says, lives up to its reputation as “the gold standard” in the field and will, as always, be helpful to scholars, the media, and policy experts. But, Farr continues, there’s also some “bad news”:

Johnson Cook has little authority, few resources, and a bureaucracy that is — notwithstanding the secretary’s fine words — largely indifferent to the advancement of international religious freedom. Unlike other ambassadors-at-large (Global Women’s Issues, Global AIDS), Johnson Cook does not report to the Secretary, but is several levels removed from Clinton. The IRF ambassador controls virtually no resources for IRF programs, and is not present in senior policy meetings involving those countries or any others. A quick look at the “U.S. Policy” sections of the reports will tell you that we have little in the way of a coordinated IRF strategy for any of these countries. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realize that this issue is not a priority for this administration, except perhaps for the speechwriters (who are doing an outstanding job).

Read Farr’s complete assessment here.

Posted on by Mark Movsesian

UNESCO Declares Bethlehem Church a World Heritage Site

Last week, UNESCO accepted Palestinians’ application to have Bethlehem’s Church of the Nativity (left), the traditional site of Jesus’ birth, declared a “World Heritage Site” under the Convention Concerning the Protection of World Cultural and Natural Heritage. The list of roughly 1000 such sites worldwide, nominated by states that have signed the Convention, is essentially an honor roll, though named properties can qualify for UN restoration funds and for protection under the laws of war. Adding the Church of the Nativity was more controversial than usual. The US and Israel objected because of the implications for Palestinian statehood. Additionally, the three Christian communions that share the shrine under the 19th-Century Status Quo, which CLR Forum has discussed before, worry that designation as a World Heritage Site will lead to interference from civil authorities. In fact, the threat of outside interference typically gets the communions to settle differences among themselves, which may explain last fall’s agreement on repairs to the church’s roof. This is not the first time the church has been the subject of world diplomacy. In the 19th Century, rival claims to the church caused an international crisis that contributed to the Crimean War.

Posted on by Mark Movsesian

Preston, “Sword of the Spirit, Shield of the Faith”

From Knopf, an  interesting new book by Cambridge historian Andrew Preston, Sword of the Spirit, Shield of the Faith: Religion in American War and Diplomacy (2012). Preston addresses a topic historians often neglect: the role of religion in American foreign policy. Americans are, by and large, a religious people, and this has influenced the way their government has acted on the world stage for centuries. Religion’s influence has been complex, inspiring progressive internationalists like Franklin Roosevelt (Prestons’s discussion of FDR’s religiosity was for me the most unexpected and intriguing part of the book) and conservative nationalists like George W. Bush. Nonetheless, Preston identifies a unifying theme, “Christian republicanism,” which he defines as “a blend of Protestant theology and democratic politics.” This worldview prizes religious liberty as the foundation of democracy and views it as the most important of human rights. Indeed, Preston shows how the protection of religious liberty abroad has been a constant theme in American diplomacy. In the nineteenth century, the State Department advocated for missionaries, including Mormons, with foreign governments, even though the Department often found the missionaries a nuisance. In the twentieth century, Henry Kissinger’s attempts to get Congress to grant the Soviet Union most-favored-nation status failed largely because Kissinger underestimated American sympathy for the plight of Soviet Jews. CLR Forum readers will be interested in the shifting perceptions of Catholicism. Although for much of American history, the Catholic Church was seen as adverse to Christian republicanism – McKinley famously justified the annexation of the Catholic Philippines in order to “Christianize” the Filipinos – that view changed during the Cold War, perhaps as a result of a common enemy America and the Church had in Communism. Preston closes his book with a prediction: although religion “may not always determine the direction” of American foreign policy, it “will be an ever-present factor.” That seems a good bet.

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Ellis, Emon, & Glahn (eds.), “Islamic Law and International Human Rights Law”

In September, Oxford University Press will publish Islamic Law and International Human Rights Law edited by Mark S. Ellis (Executive Director, International Bar Association), Anver M. Emon, (University of Toronto Faculty of Law), and Benjamin Glahn (Former Program Director, Salzburg Global Seminar). The publisher’s description follows.

The relationship between Islamic law and international human rights law has been the subject of considerable, and heated, debate in recent years. The usual starting point has been to test one system by the standards of the other, asking is Islamic law ‘compatible’ with international human rights standards, or vice versa. This approach quickly ends in acrimony and accusations of misunderstanding. By overlaying one set of norms on another we overlook the deeply contextual nature of how legal rules operate in a society, and meaningful comparison and discussion is impossible. Read more

Posted on by Michael Helfand

Putting the Legal in Religious Legal Theory

I just finished reading Samuel Levine’s essay RLT: A Preliminary Examination of Religious Legal Theory as a Movement, which considers the challenges facing the creation of a Religious Legal Theory (RLT) movement akin to Critical Legal Studies, Law & Economics and Empirical Legal Studies.  As Levine notes, the growing – and, to mind, successful – Religious Legal Theory conferences (the three annual RLT conferences thus far have been held at Seton Hall, St. John’s and Pepperdine) indicates that there is a conglomeration of research and scholarship revolving around some central concept captured by the label “religious legal theory.”

Among the challenges to the RLT movement detailed by Levine, I was most drawn to the tension between the pluralism embedded within RLT – it brings together different methodologies, disciplines and faith perspectives – and the need for a movement to advance a “foundation of meaningful concepts” in order to retain coherence, integrity and longevity.

As I’ve thought about this challenge, I’ve wondered whether RLT can do more to capitalize on the legal within religious legal theory.  By that I mean, further focus its efforts on the ways in which religion and religious life incorporates legal structures and norms.  This inquiry might itself be described as two-fold: to what extent does religious life mimic that of a legal system – and how might those similarities impact the nation-state’s treatment of religion.  As example, RLT might further explore the methods of authority, interpretation, and norm-creation within religious communities and compare those methods to compare to other legal structures.  Moreover, to the extent religion and law share important similarities, questions of accommodation, deference and enforcement might require considering religion alongside, for example, international law and foreign law where the nation-state has contemplated navigating the competing claims of conflicting legal norms.  Such an approach would incorporate insights of legal pluralism, international legal theory, political philosophy, and indigenous law into the RLT movement.

This is not to say that this isn’t already happening; to the contrary, there is growing amount of writing on this very issue – and probably more to come in light of the Supreme Court’s recent pronouncements in Hosanna-Tabor v. EEOC.  Some examples that come to mind – just to name a few – include Paul Horwitz’s work on First Amendment Institutions (here and here), Joel Nichols recent book Marriage and Divorce in a Multicultural Context, Ayelet Shacher’s book Multicultural Jurisdictions, Perry Dane’s work on church autonomy and legal pluralism (see, e.g., here and here), Rick Garnett’s work on religious institutions, (see, e.g., here and here), Chaim Saiman’s Jesus Legal Theory, and Mark Movsesian’s Fiqh and Canons: Reflections on Islamic and Christian Jurisprudence.

Consider this a pitch for more of the same and for moving this focus into the center of the RLT movement.

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Larson on Indigenous Peoples’ Religious Rights Claims to Water Resources

Rhett Larson (Arizona State U. College of Law ) has posted Holy Water and Human Rights: Indigenous Peoples’ Religious Rights Claims to Water Resources. The abstract follows.

Water, perhaps more than any other natural resource, has profound religious meaning: in ceremonial uses, as a spiritual symbol, and as an object of worship. The scarcity of legal scholarship regarding the nexus between religious rights and water law is therefore curious. This paper examines that nexus and its implications in the context of indigenous peoples and international law. The international human right to water has developed as an implicit right necessary to securing jurisprudentially underdeveloped positive rights explicitly provided for under international human rights covenants, such as the right to a standard of living, but can also be built upon the foundation of broadly accepted, jurisprudentially mature civil rights, like the freedom of religion. Grounding the human right to water on such a foundation has important implications for indigenous peoples’ religious-rights-based claims to water resources. The stability of such claims depends upon effective frameworks within which international tribunals can adjudicate such claims. Ultimately, this Article evaluates the development of the international human right to water, discusses the nexus of that right with religious rights in the context of indigenous peoples’ water-resource claims, and proposes frameworks for evaluating those claims. The formulation and interpretation of water law requires greater consideration of the cultural meaning of water to promote cooperation within the watershed and to protect natural and cultural resources.

Posted on by Mark Movsesian

US Commission on International Religious Freedom Issues Annual Report

The US Commission on International Religious Freedom, a bipartisan, independent agency within the federal government, today issued its annual report on religious freedom violations around the world. The International Religious Freedom Act authorizes the Commission to study violations of religious freedom around the world and name “countries of particular concern” (CPCs) — those countries that have practiced or tolerated “particularly severe” violations of religious freedom, including systematic torture and other human rights violations. This year, the Commission named 16 CPCs: Burma, the Democratic People‘s Republic of Korea (North Korea), Egypt, Eritrea, Iran, Iraq, Nigeria, Pakistan, the People‘s Republic of China, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Tajikistan, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Vietnam. The problems of Christians in the Middle East are extensively discussed, but so are violations directed at dissenting Muslim and other communities. This annual “naming and shaming” process has drawn criticism as another example of American overreaching, but the designation of CPCs does not always have an impact on American foreign policy. Although IFRA generally requires the President to take action in response to the designation of a country as a CPC, the statute also allows the President to waive this requirement if circumstances warrant, and Presidents often do so — an pattern the Commission criticizes in its report.

Posted on by Marc O. DeGirolami

Liveblogging the Religious Legal Theory Conference — International and Comparative Perspectives, Panel 1

I am here at this year’s Religious Legal Theory conference, The Competing Claims of Law and Religion: Who Should Influence Whom?, at Pepperdine in sunny Malibu.  The first panel on international and comparative perspectives is now going on.

The first speaker is Stijn Smet (a Ph.D. student at Ghent), who is speaking about Freedom of Religion Versus Freedom From Religion in the Jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights.  The first case Mr. Smet is discussing is the Dahlab v. Switzerland, involving a teacher who wanted to wear a headscarf in public school.  He criticizes this decision.

He is now talking about Lautsi v. Italy, the Italian crucifix case, where the Grand Chamber of the European Court ultimately upheld Italy’s right to display the crucifix in public schools.  He criticizes the idea that the crucifix is a “passive” symbol at least by comparison with the Dahlab decision’s description of the headscarf as an active symbol.

He explains the difference in outcome as involving the concept of margin of appreciation.  Neither case dealt with indoctrination, though he recognizes that the definition of indoctrination needs to be filled out.  Smet also notes that there is no Establishment Clause analogue in the Convention, and he notes the difference in power and jurisdiction of the European Court.  He suggests an “equal respect” argument which might have been available through Article 14.

The second speaker is Mark D. Rosen (Chicago-Kent).

Read more