Law, Religion, Constitution ― Freedom of Religion, Equal Treatment, and the Law

What is the place assigned to religion in the constitutions of contemporary States? What role is religion expected to perform in the fields that are the object of constitutional regulation? Is separation of religion and politics a necessary precondition for democracy and the rule of law? These questions are addressed in this book through an analysis of the constitutional texts that are in force in different parts of the world. Constitutions are at the centre of almost all contemporary legal systems and provide the principles and values that inspire the action of the national law-makers. After a discussion of some topics that are central to the constitutional regulation of religion, the book considers a number of national systems covering countries with a variety of religious and cultural backgrounds. The final section of the book is devoted to the discussion of the constitutional regulation of some particularly controversial issues, such as religious education, the relation between freedom of speech and freedom of religion, abortion, and freedom of conscience.

W. Cole Durham Jr., is Director of the International Center for Law and Religion Studies, a position he has held since the Center was officially organized on January 1, 2000. A graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School, where he was a Note Editor of the Harvard Law Review and Managing Editor of the Harvard International Law Journal, Professor Durham has been heavily involved in comparative law scholarship, with a special emphasis on comparative constitutional law. He is currently the President of the International Consortium for Law and Religion Studies (ICLARS) and a Co-Editor-in-Chief of the Oxford Journal of Law and Religion. He served from 1997-2013 as a member of the OSCE/ODIHRa€?s Advisory Council on Freedom of Religion or Belief. He is a Vice President of the International Academy for Freedom of Religion and Belief and has served as a board member of church-state centers at DePaul and Baylor Universities, of the International Religious Liberty Association, and of the International Advisory Board of the Oslo Coalition on Freedom of Religion or Belief. Silvio Ferrari is Professor of Law and Religion at the University of Milan. Visiting professor at the University of California (Berkeley, 1994 and 2001), the Institute for Advanced Legal Studies (London, 1998-99) and the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes (Paris, Sorbonne, 2004). His main fields of interest are law and religion in Europe, comparative law of religions (particularly Jewish law, Canon law and Islamic law) and the Vatican policy in the Middle East. He is honorary president of ICLARS (International Consortium for Law and Religion Studies) and a member of the International Academy of Comparative Law. He is also one of the editors-in-chief of the Oxford Journal of Law and Religion and member of the Editorial Board of the Ecclesiastical Law Journal (Cambridge Univ. Press). Dr Cristiana Cianitto is a lecturer at the University di Milan. She also teaches Anglican Canon Law in the Faculty of Theology in Lugano Switzerland. Her main fields of study are religiously motivated hate speech and hate crimes; Church and State relationships in the UK with a particular attention to the Anglican canon law and the British legal system in relation to religious issues. She is a member of the editorial board of Quaderni di Diritto e Politica Ecclesiastica and a Casenote Editor for the Oxford Journal for Law and Religion. She is a member of and the secretariat of the International Consortium for Law and Religion Studies (ICLARS). Donlu Thayer, is the Managing Editor of the International Center for Law and Religion Studies at Brigham Young University, with responsibility for overseeing print and electronic publications, including creating the Center's newsletters, maintaining the website as well as producing the Headline News Digest sent daily to subscribers worldwide. Thayer is a Casenote Editor for the Oxford Journal of Law and Religion. Before joining the Center in 2009, Thayer had a long career as a teacher, writer, and editor. She worked as an editor for BYU Press and was for many years volume editor for the New World Archaeological Foundation before receiving her J.D. from the J. Reuben Clark Law School at Brigham Young University.