The next essay, " The United Nations and Freedom of Religion: The Work of the Human Rights Committee"
by Malcolm D. Evans provides an empirical examination of the operation of international protection of religious
liberty. Specifically he assesses the work of the Human Rights Committee, focusing on its interpretation of the
International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), especially its interpretation of Article 18. He
argues that the HRC has been insufficiently protective of religious liberty, either because of an overly narrow
definition of religion and religious practice, or in finding that a state interest in limiting religious practice
was justified. According to Evans, this result was not compelled by Article 18 language, which was sufficiently
imprecise to be read broadly or narrowly depending on the
inclinations of the interpreters. He concludes that while Article 18 promises broad protection for religious liberty,
its practice is quite different.
Anyone who has followed the debates over the reading of the United States Constitution's free exercise clause will
find much of this to be quite familiar. Beyond that, Evans' discussion of the interpretive problems involved in
reading Article 18 is not only interesting in itself, but has relevance as well to the broader debates among constitutional
scholars over interpretative methods. Evans provides support for those who argue that looking at language alone
is often an insufficient guide to the
interpretation of legal texts, especially constitutions. He also shows how attitudes play a role in determining
legal outcomes. These two points are well-supported.
His conclusion is less convincing because he fails to actually look at the state justifications that were employed
and to then present a case that the balance struck was inappropriate.
Two other essays deal with international law and religious liberty. These articles do not, as one might have expected
as a matter of logic, immediately follow the Evans discussion. In Chapter 7, Julian Rivers looks at how the United
Kingdom's adoption of the Human Rights Act of 1998, particularly s. 13 (with its advanced protection of religious
liberty) is likely to affect "the law of religious liberty and religious establishment in the U. K."
In the course of this analysis, Rivers also discusses some of the probable consequences for the U. K. 's institutional
structure. Rivers begins by describing the institutional and environmental setting within which the Human Rights
Act will be implemented. The point of departure is that the U. K. has a long history of Christian religious establishments
and privileges
for Christianity. Other religions were tolerated, but were not afforded equality. So for example, the law of blasphemy,
prohibiting insults against the beliefs and feeling of a faith, applied only to Christianity. The state educational
system also favored Christianity, and claims for exemptions from general law in order to accommodate the needs
of religious obligation were more likely to be
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granted to Christians. This favoritism toward Christianity has softened but not disappeared. Rivers holds that
the Human Rights Act is not likely to limit religious influence over law, but instead is likely to extend protections
to non-Christians. Rivers also expects that the authority of judges is likely to be enhanced.
I found much of merit in this analysis. It has a great deal to say about how law can shift institutional power
arrangements, in this instance courts gaining at the expense of the legislature, and the role of the legal and
political culture in the definition of rights. Rivers, together with the other writers in this volume, focuses
far more on assuring autonomy to religious institutions and expanding religious privileges than on limiting the
influence of religion over law. The argument that separation of church and state might advance religious liberty
is not even considered.
The final piece on this topic is by Sophie C. Van Bijsterveld. Starting with a goal "to explore and analyze
the attitude towards, and understanding of religion in the international domain,"(p.164) she sets out two
competing conceptions of religion, She is not concerned here with definitions, that is, whether a particular belief
qualifies or does not qualify as religious, the sort of issue that comes up, for example, in evaluating who is
entitled to conscientious objector status. Rather, she is interested in different conceptions of the nature of
religion. Is it a private activity or a social activity? She compares what she describes as the liberal understanding
of
religion with the sociological conception. In the liberal understanding religion is viewed as private; a line
is drawn between a state actor and a private actor, and religious liberty is an individual right. This is a model
she believes "echoes the American Jeffersonian notion of the 'wall of separation' between Church and state"
(p.167). The sociological model by contrast recognizes that religion has a social dimension. Not only is religious
practice often tied to institutions, but religion also affects culture, one's position in the community, and one's
behavior. She goes on to assert that the liberal vision has dominated thinking in Western Europe, but
that is now changing.
She then provides an overview of "developments in law and policy with regard to religion" (p. 163).
Though she makes some mention of courts, her focus is on principles as set out in international legislative bodies,
the Council of Europe, the United Nations, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe and the European
Union. She argues that there is growing recognition within these bodies that religious liberty requires more than
merely keeping government from acting so as to limit that freedom. It requires active government intervention,
for example, intervention to provide opportunities for those in government institutions such as prisons an opportunity
to practice their religion. She suggests as well that governments have a positive obligation to protect religious
liberty in situations where
the deprivation comes from private activity.
Other essays deal with church and state controversies in the United States, where the debate is framed by the Supreme
Court's interpretation of the religion clauses of the First Amendment, providing that " Congress shall make
no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof". Michael McConnell
shares Ahdar's ideological perspective, and argues for a shift in Supreme Court doctrine. He contends that Supreme
Court's religion
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clauses jurisprudence is hopelessly confused, a confusion that he attributes to the Court's failure to "make
up its collective mind about what purposes are to be served by the Religion Clauses" (p. 64). He goes on
to argue that the Court's decisions would be both more coherent and more in line with the clauses' objectives of
protecting religious liberty if it were to move from its current reading of the free exercise clause which requires
no more than the government not target religion for disadvantage, to the approach it had taken from 1963-1990 under
which government was required to make accommodations for religious practices "provided exceptions and accommodations
can be made without excessive injury to important government interests" (p. 65). McConnell also advocates
against reading the establishment clause as requiring separation of church and state, favoring instead the adoption
of a neutrality principle, with neutrality defined as equal treatment of religion, rather than as prohibiting state
support for religion.
Michael McConnell is a fine advocate for his position, but there is obviously another side in the constitutional
debate about the interpretation of the religion clauses, and the present Supreme Court justices are in fact closely
divided on these issues. McConnell provides only a partial account of that argument and Ahdar does not include
an essay that presents the separation position.
Marie A. Failinger, the other essayist to write about the religion clauses of the United States Constitution, also
believes that Supreme Court doctrine has been confused. The focus of her analysis is more historical--what the
Court has done in the past, and why it has taken the positions it has. To this end she reviews key developments
in free exercise and establishment clause arenas, and holds that these arguments are less about constitutional
analyses than about power- about whose country is this anyway. "[T]he equality of religious and secular beliefs,
undergirded by separationism, is promoted by Americans who want to limit majoritarian
religious influence in the political scene, while religious freedom is the battle cry for those who want to curb
the power dominance of secularism or minority religious influence" (p. 91). In my view this chapter does
little to either support or refute the themes set out in Ahdar's introduction but it is nonetheless one of the
book's more interesting essays.
The three chapters yet to be discussed further add to the book's diversity. In Chapter 6, James T. Richardson,
has written an interesting essay but one that is only tangentially related to the others in the book. He argues
first that minority religions are treated poorly by the legal system. This is the result of discretion in the admission
of evidence, which permits judges to allow the introduction of questionable evidence--for example evidence of so-called
brainwashing in cases involving "cults," or evidence about satanic rituals in cases involving charges
of child molestation. In the end however, many such rulings are overturned on appeal. The second half of the
essay argues that community concern over child molestation coupled with the desire to protect those children who
have already been harmed have led to legal procedures that inadequately safeguard the rights of defendants. It
is an interesting discussion, but religion has been a factor in only some of these cases.
Reid Mortensen in Chapter 9 tells the story of the failure of the litigation effort to use the law of blasphemous
libel to prevent
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the display of Andres Serrano's "Piss Christ" in public galleries in Australia and New Zealand, a law
that prosecutors have essentially put to an end. Mortensen does not disagree with this result but urges the galleries
to take account the feelings of the community in deciding which are to display. "The ethic of mutual respect
must be central to the life of liberal democracy" (p. 190).
The book concludes with Davina Cooper's "'And was Jerusalem Builded Here?' Talmudic Territory and the Modernist
Defense." In this essay Cooper tells the story of the conflict between orthodox Jews who sought to build an
eruv a London suburb and those who opposed them. Under Talmudic law, which sets out the religious rules for Orthodox
Jews, an eruv is a public space that is turned into a private space, a symbolic home, by setting it apart from
other space by either the use of existing structures or the stringing of wires across newly constructed poles.
The eruv is important to Orthodox Jews because it is permissible to carry and push within its boundaries, activities
that are otherwise prohibited on the Sabbath. Since the eruv depends on the appropriation of public space for
a religious purpose, it certainly provides an example of the difficulty of relegating religion to the purely private
sphere. What is asked for here is what in the American setting would be
characterized as an accommodation.
Cooper, however, is not writing to demonstrate the inseparability of law and religion. Rather, she sees the eruv
dispute as an example of the clash between liberalism and traditional religion. The "eruv symbolically condensed
for opponents crucial and detested aspects of the momentum gathering, cultural revolution" (p. 216). By her
account, then, liberalism is actually intolerant. However, this dispute may have been less a clash between liberalism
and traditional religion than evidence of intra-communal conflict. Some of the essay hints at the tension. Cooper,
for example, attributes some of the opposition to fears of secular Jews that Orthodox separateness threatens their
own assimilation (p. 201). However, in so far as this was true, it has little resonance for the larger question
of a liberal-traditional divide which does not involve the sensitivities of minority groups. It is worth pointing
out as well Cooper's characterization of Jewish opponents of the eruv as secular. They may have been, but they
also may have been serious adherents to conservative or reform synagogues. The point is important because to the
extent that opposition was the result of hostility between the sects, hostility generated by being characterized
as heretics by some adherents of orthodox Judaism, the eruv dispute has little to say more generally about the
clash between liberalism and traditional religion.
In the end, I was not convinced that the themes set out in Ahdar's introduction were fully developed. I would
also suggest that one might draw a very different conclusion than his from some of the data provided regarding
separation as a means of protecting religious liberty. It seemed to me that while international religious minorities
are doing better as a result of their growth, changes in public attitudes, and changes in international norms,
their position remains less secure than in a separationist structure of the order supported by Justices Brennan
and now Justices Souter, O'Connor, Breyer, and Ginsburg. Under this interpretation, the no establishment clause
is read to protect one's standing in the community, and the free exercise clause is read to protect not
Page 138 begins here only religious belief but also religious practice.
One the other hand, these essays do have much to say about the effects of institutions and political culture on
policy-making. The most obvious is that the international protection of religious liberty operates on national
structures where established churches are prevalent. A long history of religion-state connection also creates
a cultural climate where such structures are more accepted than they are in the United States. Thus, although
there are now a number of international instruments that protect religious liberty, the American solution by means
of separation of church and state is not really considered as a serious option in many countries. It is also possible
to see how Europe's more communitarian and more positive understanding of the concept of liberty affect the structures
that are
chosen.
Some of the essays in this book were enjoyable reading, but the book as a whole does not fit in well as a classroom
text. Its scope is so diverse as to be difficult to integrate, limiting its utility for an introductory course.
The lack of balance limits it as well. It might be used in more advanced classes, but the essays are appropriate
for very different audiences. The book might best be used in an upper-division course on comparative religion
and politics. Some of the essays might also be profitably assigned to specialized classes dealing with social
aspects of law, others to classes on comparative law.
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Copyright 2002 by the author, Caren G. Dubnoff