Constitutional Secularism in an Age of Religious Revival

Susanna Mancini · Michel Rosenfeld

Jan 2014 · OUP Oxford

About this ebook

The global movement of culture and religion has brought about a serious challenge to traditional constitutional secularism. This challenge comes in the form of a political and institutional struggle against secular constitutionalism, and a two pronged assault on the very legitimacy and viability of the concept. On the one hand, constitutional secularism has been attacked as inherently hostile rather than neutral toward religion; and, on the other hand, constitutional secularism has been criticized as inevitably favouring one religion (or set of religions) over others. The contributors to this book come from a variety of different disciplines including law, anthropology, history, philosophy and political theory. They provide accounts of, and explanations for, present predicaments; critiques of contemporary institutional, political and cultural arrangements, justifications and practices; and suggestions with a view to overcoming or circumventing several of the seemingly intractable or insurmountable current controversies and deadlocks. The book is separated in to five parts. Part I provides theoretical perspectives on the present day conflicts between secularism and religion. Part II focuses on the relationship between religion, secularism and the public sphere. Part III examines the nexus between religion, secularism and women's equality. Part IV concentrates on religious perspectives on constraints on, and accommodations of, religion within the precincts of the liberal state. Finally, Part V zeroes in on conflicts between religion and secularism in specific contexts, namely education and freedom of speech.

About the author

Susanna Mancini is a Professor of Comparative Constitutional Law at the University of Bologna School of Law and an adjunct professor of international law at the SAIS Johns Hopkins University BC. She is a current visiting profesor at the Central European University (Budapest) and at the B.N. Cardozo School of Law (NYC). Michel Rosenfeld is the Justice Sydney L. Robbins Professor of Human Rights and director of the Program on Global and Comparative Constitutional Theory at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, Yeshiva University. He is the co-editor-in-chief of International Journal of Consumer Law and the author or co-editor of numerous books, including Law, Justice, Democracy, and the Clash of Cultures: A Pluralist Account (2010) and most recently with Andras Sajo of the Oxford Handbook of Comparative Constitutional Law.