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Introduction: Symposium On Religion, Religious Pluralism, And The Rule Of Law, Mark C. Modak-Truran
Introduction: Symposium On Religion, Religious Pluralism, And The Rule Of Law, Mark C. Modak-Truran
Mark C Modak-Truran
The articles and essays in this Symposium on Religion, Religious Pluralism, and the Rule of Law were presented for a Section on Law and Religion panel at the 2007 Annual Meeting of the Association of American Law Schools. The Symposium aims to move the debate about the relationship between law and religion beyond conflicts between secularists and religionists by focusing attention on presuppositions about religion, religious pluralism, and the rule of law. Focusing on these presuppositions helps get beyond the tendency of most legal scholars, judges, and lawyers to think through the law rather than about the law. The articles …
Beyond Theocracy And Secularism (Part I): Toward A New Paradigm For Law And Religion, Mark C. Modak-Truran
Beyond Theocracy And Secularism (Part I): Toward A New Paradigm For Law And Religion, Mark C. Modak-Truran
Mark C Modak-Truran
The continued vitality of religion has motivated many scholars in sociology, anthropology, political theory, international relations, and philosophy to revisit their assumptions about how religion relates to their disciplines. Despite this robust re-examination in other disciplines, two outmoded paradigms about the relationship between law and religion —theocracy (pre-modern) and secularism (modern)—continue to dominate legal theory. Under the modern paradigm, the secularization of law—that the law is or should be independent of any religious foundation or values—arguably constitutes the most widely-held but least-examined assumption in contemporary legal theory. My thesis is that two quandaries or crises for legal theory—legal indeterminacy and …