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Articles 1 - 5 of 5
Full-Text Articles in Religion Law
Against Circumspection: Judges, Religious Symbols, And Signs Of Moral Independence, Benjamin Berger
Against Circumspection: Judges, Religious Symbols, And Signs Of Moral Independence, Benjamin Berger
Benjamin L. Berger
This chapter questions the interpretation of religious signs and symbols— and the interpretive possibilities that emerge when we demand more from one another in thinking about such symbols— by examining the question of judges and religious dress in the particular context of the judge’s role as wielding the coercive force of the state through the exercise of criminal punishment. I advance the argument that recent debates have proceeded on a misleadingly simplistic approach to understanding the meaning of signs of religious belonging and identity in this setting and that, with this, we miss an opportunity for a deeper …
Law’S Religion: Religious Difference And The Claims Of Constitutionalism, Benjamin Berger
Law’S Religion: Religious Difference And The Claims Of Constitutionalism, Benjamin Berger
Benjamin L. Berger
Prevailing stories about law and religion place great faith in the capacity of legal multiculturalism, rights-based toleration, and conceptions of the secular to manage issues raised by religious difference. Yet the relationship between law and religion consistently proves more fraught than such accounts suggest. In Law’s Religion, Benjamin L. Berger knocks law from its perch above culture, arguing that liberal constitutionalism is an aspect of, not an answer to, the challenges of cultural pluralism. Berger urges an approach to the study of law and religion that focuses on the experience of law as a potent cultural force. Based on a …
The Cultural Limits Of Legal Tolerance, Benjamin Berger
The Cultural Limits Of Legal Tolerance, Benjamin Berger
Benjamin L. Berger
This article presents the argument that our understanding of the nature of the relationship between modern constitutionalism and religious difference has suffered with the success of the story of legal tolerance and multiculturalism. Taking up the Canadian case, in which the conventional narrative of legal multiculturalism has such purchase, this piece asks how the interaction of law and religion - and, in particular, the practices of legal tolerance - would look if we sought in earnest to understand law as a component, rather than a curator, of cultural diversity in modern liberal societies. Understanding the law as itself a cultural …
Key Theoretical Issues In The Interaction Of Law And Religion: A Guide For The Perplexed, Benjamin Berger
Key Theoretical Issues In The Interaction Of Law And Religion: A Guide For The Perplexed, Benjamin Berger
Benjamin L. Berger
There is perhaps no more important access point into the key issues of modern political and legal theory than the questions raised by the interaction of law and religion in contemporary constitutional democracies. Of course, much classical political and moral theory was forged on the issue of the relationship between religious difference and state authority. John Locke’s work was directly influenced by this issue, writing as he did about the just configuration of state authority and moral difference in the wake of the Thirty Years’ War. Yet debates about the appropriate role of religion in public life and the challenges …
"Simply A Constitutional Legal Question?": Law, Religion And The Modern State, Benjamin L. Berger
"Simply A Constitutional Legal Question?": Law, Religion And The Modern State, Benjamin L. Berger
Benjamin L. Berger
Benjamin L. Berger, Associate Professor at Osgoode Hall Law School, on key questions about law, religion, and social change.