Religious Freedom and the Right to Refuse Care

During the COVID-19 pandemic, many governments established important restrictions on religious freedom. Due to a restrictive interpretation of the right to religious freedom, religion was placed in the category of “non-essential activity” and was, therefore, unprotected. Within this framework, this paper tries to offer a reflection on the relevance of the dual nature of religious freedom as an individual and collective right, since the current crisis has made it clear that the individual dimension of religious freedom is vulnerable when the legal model does not offer an adequate institutional guarantee to the collective dimension of religious freedom.

Download Full-text

Lachiri v Belgium and Bans on Wearing Islamic Dress in the Courtroom: An Emerging Trend

Ecclesiastical Law Journal ◽

10.1017/s0956618x18000947 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 21 (1) ◽

pp. 48-53

Author(s):

Kaushik Paul

Keyword(s):

Human Rights ◽

Religious Freedom ◽

Public Spaces ◽

Religious Liberty ◽

Recent Case ◽

European Convention ◽

European Court ◽

The Subject ◽

The Right ◽

Islamic Dress

In recent years, the wearing of Islamic dress in public spaces and elsewhere has generated widespread controversy all over Europe. The wearing of the hijab and other Islamic veils has been the subject of adjudication before the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) on many occasions. The most recent case before the ECtHR as to the prohibition on wearing the hijab is Lachiri v Belgium. In this case, the ECtHR held that a prohibition on wearing the hijab in the courtroom constitutes an infringement of Article 9 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), which guarantees the right to freedom of religion or belief. From the perspective of religious freedom, the ruling of the Strasbourg Court in Lachiri is very significant for many reasons. The purpose of this comment is critically to analyse the ECtHR's decision in Lachiri from the standpoint of religious liberty.

Download Full-text

Religious freedom and the ‘right to discriminate’ in the school admissions context: a neo-republican critique

Legal Studies ◽

10.1111/j.1748-121x.2011.00204.x ◽

2011 ◽

Vol 31 (4) ◽

pp. 615-643 ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

Eoin Daly ◽

Tom Hickey

Keyword(s):

Public Education ◽

Religious Freedom ◽

Religious Discrimination ◽

Religious Schools ◽

The Public ◽

Definition Of ◽

The Uk ◽

The Right ◽

Republican Theory ◽

Faith Schools

In law and discourse, it has typically been assumed that the religious freedom of state-funded religious schools must trump any competing right to non-discrimination on grounds of belief. For example, the Irish Constitution has been interpreted as requiring the broad exemption of denominational schools from the statutory prohibition on religious discrimination in school admissions. This stance is mirrored in the UK Equality Act 2010. Thus, religious discrimination in the public education context has been rationalised with reference to a ‘liberty-equality dichotomy’, which prioritises the integrity of faith schools' ‘ethos’, as an imperative of religious freedom. We argue that this familiar conceptual dichotomy generates a novel set of absurdities in this peculiar context. We suggest that the construction of religious freedom and non-discrimination as separate and antagonistic values rests on a conceptually flawed definition of religious freedom itself, which overlooks the necessary dependence of religious freedom on non-discrimination. Furthermore, it overstates the necessity, to religious freedom, of religious schools' ‘right to discriminate’. We argue for an alternative ordering of the values of religious freedom and non-discrimination – which we locate within the neo-republican theory of freedom as non-domination.

Download Full-text

From Toleration to Laïcité

Dialogue and Universalism ◽

10.5840/du202131225 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 31 (2) ◽

pp. 145-161

Author(s):

Gerhardt Stenger ◽

Keyword(s):

Religious Freedom ◽

Church And State ◽

Saint Augustine ◽

Anglo Saxon ◽

Modern Times ◽

Political Justification ◽

History Of ◽

The Law ◽

Pierre Bayle ◽

The Right

This paper traces the history of the philosophical and political justification of religious tolerance from the late 17th century to modern times. In the Anglo-Saxon world, John Locke’s Letter Concerning Toleration (1689) gave birth to the doctrine of the separation of Church and State and to what is now called secularization. In France, Pierre Bayle refuted, in his Philosophical Commentary (1685), the justification of intolerance taken from Saint Augustine. Following him, Voltaire campaigned for tolerance following the Calas affair (1763), and the Declaration of the Rights of Man (1789) imposed religious freedom which, a century later, resulted in the uniquely French notion of laïcité, which denies religion any supremacy, and any right to organize life in its name. Equality before the law takes precedence over freedom: the fact of being a believer does not give rise to the right to special statutes or to exceptions to the law.

Download Full-text