Imams’ Prison Service in Nizhny Novgorod Oblast in 2007-2021

This article is devoted to the imams’ prison service of the Spiritual Administration of Muslims of the Nizhny Novgorod Region (DUMNO) in the institutions of the Federal Penitentiary Service of Russia in 2007-2021. The relevance of the study lies in the fact that the imams’ work comes as a contribution to the observance of the convicts’ rights for the freedom of conscience and to the help in practicing their religion. This article describes the evolution of the imams’ prison service as a form of social service in the period from 2007 to 2021 in institutions of to the Offi ce of Federal Penitentiary Service of Russia in Nizhny Novgorod Region. The source base of the study includes materials of the offi cial websites of the DUMNO, the Offi ce of Federal Penitentiary Service of Russia in Nizhny Novgorod Region, the media content, Russian legislation and regulations, interviews with imams, offi cials of Federal Penitentiary Service of Russia and convicts. The study results a vision of the evolution of relations between DUMNO and the Offi ce of Federal Penitentiary Service of Russia in Nizhny Novgorod Region. The paper demonstrates a gradual increase in the number of imams’ contacts, forms of work with convicts to improve the situation in the fi eld of rights of convicts. Moreover, the research exposes the fact of growing numbers of imams having gained experience in prison service. According to the results of the study Islamic education for convicts comes as the important part of imams’ prison service.

«Pastoral works» in the memories of A.F. Koni: problems of freedom of conscience in the Russian Empire on the eve of the First russian revolution

This publication examines the unexplored topic of the Senate jurisprudence regarding the legal status of Lutheran priests in the Baltic States at the end of the XIX century. The author defines the significance of the policy of state pressure on Protestant pastors in the context of the general attack of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Synod on non-Orthodox religious organizations under K. Pobedonostsev. Consideration of the issue from the position of the higher court of the Empire has not previously been undertaken in the scientific literature. During the preparation of the work, mainly narrative material was used the memoirs of the Chief Prosecutor of the Senate. Due to the small number of cases and the semi-secret nature, the materials of the Senate were not particularly reflected in the collections of decisions and sentences. The problem-chronological approach was applied to study this subject. As a result, the reasons of the weak pressure on Protestant pastors the author associates with the deep rootedness of Lutheranism in the popular environment, the brutal activity of the police and the church, fears of a quarrel with the Lutheran countries of Europe, etc. Few sentences against pastors who seduced the Orthodox into another faith reached the Criminal Cassation Department of the Senate, where they met with resistance a group of senators led by the famous lawyer, humanist A.F. Koni. Among the numerous schismatic and sectarian affairs that A.F. Koni, as chief prosecutor and senator, draw attention to the so-called pastoral affairs, which have not been sufficiently researched in the domestic scientific literature, and yet they well illustrate the church-state policy of the Russian state on the outskirts of the empire on the eve of the first Russian revolution. The author concludes that pastoral affairs are interesting not only from the point of view of the struggle of Russian infidels and the domestic educated intelligentsia for freedom of conscience in Russia, but they also allow to look from the inside at the work of the bureaucratic apparatus of the empire, to understand the work (internal kitchen) of the Governing Senate: internal intrigues, the indirect influence of the monarch and the chief prosecutor of the Holy Synod on senators and, accordingly, the decision on religious matters, informal consultations of the Minister of Justice with the chief prosecutor of the criminal cassation department (probing the atmosphere in the case, including through an intermediary), the selection of a senator-rapporteur on a particular important case, etc. Thanks to A.F. Koni, attempts to persecute pastors did not develop, and after 1900 the persecution of priests on religious grounds in the Baltics stopped. The subject is interesting and requires further development and study.

Connecting Gender Identity and Freedom of Conscience in Recent Romanian Constitutional Case-Law

The Constitutional Court of Romania has recently ruled unconstitutional a new provision amending the Law regarding national education, meant to prohibit “any activity of disseminating the theory or opinion of gender identity, understood as the theory or opinion that gender is a concept different from biologic sex and that the two are not always the same”. This provision was found in breach of several constitutional principles, including freedom of conscience and freedom of expression. This decision makes for a brief ingression into the legal nature of gender identity and that of freedom of conscience, allowing for the former to serve as a means to clarifying the scope of application of the latter. Since gender identity recognition is not a “world view”, but a reflection of diversity which is integral to a plural, democratic society, the only way the said provision breached freedom of conscience involved its interior dimension: the freedom of thought of pupils and students. But it did not even involve an interference with the right to manifest a “conviction”, as far as pupils, students and also teachers are concerned. Nonetheless, it breached their freedom of expression.

Kontrowersje wokół armeńskiej ustawy o wolności sumienia i organizacjach religijnych

The article discusses the basic legal act on the right to religious freedom The Law of the Republic of Armenia on the Freedom of Conscience and on Religious Organizations, which was enacted in Armenia in the early 1990s and which, in a slightly modified version, is still in force today. In Armenia, the close link between ethnicity and religious affiliation (Armenian Apostolic Church) makes it difficult to adopt legal solutions that would guarantee the full realization of the right to religious freedom. The Armenian Apostolic Church considers religious freedom as an anti-national provision, and therefore qualifies all other religious organizations as "sects" and anti-national structures. The article provides a detailed analysis of the Religious Denominations Act, indicates which of its provisions are most controversial and shows how the adopted legal solutions differ from the international standards.

The Outline of Constitutional Regulations on the Freedom of Conscience and Religion in Poland

Freedom of conscience and religion is one of the fundamental freedoms of person. This freedom is a constitutionally registered freedom and its exercise, like its constitutional guarantees, is the foundation of the modern concept of a democratic state’s rule of law. At the same time, the concept of a democratic rule of law is a source of limitations for this freedom, implemented in the spirit of European standards. The regulation of the freedom of conscience and religion under the Constitution of the Republic of Poland is a relatively extensive regulation, showing its own specificity, rooted in the experiences of the past, undemocratic political reality. Freedom of conscience and religion cannot be considered solely in the sphere of the psyche and in the sphere of privacy. On the contrary, it has an important public-law dimension. The issue taken up is closely related to the freedom of worldview, which determines both the behavior of the individual towards himself and the behavior of the individual towards other people and towards the community. The author presents and analyzes the regulation in question against the background of the principles determining the position of churches and religious associations in the state and their relations with the state.

Political Implications of Orthodox Identity: An Example of the World Russian People’s Council

The article examines the conceptual ideas of the World Russian Peoples Council, acting under the auspices of the Russian Orthodox Church, regarding the implementation of the right to freedom of conscience and the status of religious associations in Russia. Furthermore, the speeches of heads of the states at the Councils were studied for their attitude to the ideological content of the activities of this organization. On the basis of the data obtained, the author attempts to find a correlation between the proposals voiced at the Councils on changing certain aspects in the religious sphere and the reforms of the Russian legislation on freedom of conscience. As a result of this study, a striking coincidence was revealed between the two factors mentioned: the provisions discussed at the Councils, as a rule, after some time were reflected in Russian normative legal acts. Not having sufficient grounds for declaring an unambiguous causal relationship between conciliar ideas and legislative reform, one can, in any case, assume a significant impact of the activities of the World Russian Peoples Council on the state policy in implementation of the right to freedom of conscience in modern Russia.

Extraterritorial Privacy Zone?

The Protestant Reformation led to a radical redrawing of the map of Europe, severely affecting international relations. An important consequence of Protestantism was the emphasis on the private dimension of religious practices, as it did away with clerical intermediaries and instead put the focus on the direct relationship between God and the believer. In this context, to facilitate diplomatic traffic between Catholic and Protestant countries, ambassadors came to enjoy the so-called Right of Chapel, allowing them to create a private place of worship and have a private chaplain at their ambassadorial residences. This right was explicitly included in two treaties that the Kingdom of Portugal and the Dutch Republic concluded with each other in the mid-seventeenth century. However, the two parties to the treaties had starkly different understandings of what was meant by ‘private’. Both of these treaties granted Dutch citizens in Portugal freedom of conscience in their own houses, but the contrasting interpretations of what ‘private’ actually meant for the Dutch and for the Portuguese resulted in serious disagreement about the exact scope of these religious rights.

Living According to Conscience

We discuss the proposal of Chandran Kukathas engaged in one of the goals of‎liberal theories: the protection of freedom of conscience. Kukathas proposes‎the metaphor of a liberal archipelago where different communities are sovereign‎in enforcing their worldview on their territory. We share Kukathas’s‎intention to strongly protect freedom of conscience, but we think that Kukathas’s‎theory fails to adequately protect it. In Kukathas’s view, freedom of‎conscience is protected through freedom of association and the related freedom‎to exit an association. But freedom of exit, intended only as a right not‎to be coerced when one wants to leave, is insufficient. It must be sustained by‎the provision of capabilities to leave that one can exercise, as well as by capabilities‎to evaluate her condition. We discuss, then, a more promising proposal‎of an egalitarian libertarian archipelago proposed by Michael Otsuka. After‎explaining why this system isn’t sufficiently stable, we conclude that the constitutional‎egalitarian liberal state is a better candidate.‎

Le Sezioni Unite della Cassazione sul crocifisso a scuola: alla ricerca di un difficile equilibrio tra pulsioni laiciste e giurisprudenza europea

SOMMARIO - 1. Il crocifisso in classe davanti alle Sezioni Unite - 2. Laicità dello Stato e autonomia scolastica - 3. Conflitto tra diritti e reasonable accommodation - 4. La regola della reasonable accommodation nella giurisprudenza straniera e italiana - 5. Il crocifisso come simbolo “essenzialmente passivo” nella giurisprudenza europea - 6. Reasonable accommodation in assenza di una lesione di diritti: rilievi critici - 7. Bilanciamento dei diritti e legislazione scolastica - 8. Il rapporto asimmetrico tra docente e alunni nella scuola: un dato del tutto omesso - 9. La rimozione del crocifisso da parte del docente: un atto lecito? Osservazioni conclusive. The Supreme Court’s United Sections on the Crucifix controversy in schools: searching for a difficult balance between laicism and European case-law ABSTRACT: This paper examines critically, in the light of the Italian and European case-law, the contents and the juridical arguments of a recent decision issued by the United Sections of the Italian Court of Cassation concerning the Crucifix controversy arisen in a State school. The judges established, on one hand, that the crucifix may be hung in a classroom upon demand of the students as it does not infringe the dissenting teacher’s freedom of conscience or of teaching, according to Lautsi ECHR decision (2011); on the other hand, the clash of values involved would need a reasonable accommodation which could require other religious symbols alongside the crucifix or its removal during the lessons of the dissenting teacher. Such a decision, according to the author, appears to be somewhat contradictory and ambiguous, and it does not resolve the case in a well-balanced way.