Talk About: Law and Religion
Blog of
The International Center
for Law and Religion Studies
Featured Conversations
Recent Posts

Religious Freedom, Realism, and Constitution-Making
by Andrea Pin
The debate over Syria’s new constitution is the latest iteration of several efforts to pacify the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region while securing the rule of law and human rights. The twenty-first century is marked by an impressively long series of constitutional documents that have attempted to pursue these goals, with precarious or even disappointing results. The geographic span of countries that have undergone such processes, often with international help, extends from Morocco to Afghanistan. In some cases, constitutional changes have resulted in amendments that left the preexisting elites in charge; on other occasions, new constitutions have marked dramatic regime changes. …

In 2017, Israel’s Supreme Court was asked to decide a peculiar question: could a state court tell a religious community to shun one of its members? The case involved a husband who refused to grant his wife a Jewish religious divorce, a gett. Under Orthodox Jewish law, without her husband’s consent the woman could not remarry or have children who would be recognized as legitimate. Israeli law, by giving exclusive jurisdiction over Jewish marriage and divorce to rabbinical courts, effectively entrenches this discriminatory rule. To mitigate its harshest consequences, state rabbinical courts have long been empowered to impose coercive civil sanctions, executed by the state’s enforcement apparatus: freezing assets, revoking drivers’ licenses, even jailing recalcitrant husbands. But these powers do not always work. In some ultra-Orthodox communities, social shame matters more than loss of liberty. So rabbinical judges began invoking traditional sanctions from medieval Jewish law—calling on neighbors to ostracize the stubborn husband until he relented. The Supreme Court’s response was striking. …

ICLRS Director Brett G. Scharffs and Associate Director Elizabeth A. Clark discuss the concept behind and mission of the International Center for Law and Religion Studies. They share personal memories of the Center’s beginnings; recount the work of its founding director, W. Cole Durham, Jr.; and explain the Center’s activities, the sensitivities of cross-cultural dialogue, the value of patience, and the best compliment ever paid to the Center. The interview is in honor of and dedicated to the 25th anniversary of the ICLRS, which was founded 1 January 2000.

… In Mahmoud, the Court majority held that Yoder stands for the proposition that the state cannot force exposure to ideas that undermine a family’s religious beliefs without violating the Free Exercise Clause. This was a misreading of Yoder and the other cases the majority cites, but for the reasons discussed below, the outcome in the case may have been correct. As the dissent explains, Yoder did not stand for the proposition that mere exposure to ideas that might violate someone’s religion is adequate to raise a free exercise violation. The dissent suggests, instead, that Yoderrequires some form of coercion in order to support a free exercise violation. Yet this too is a misreading of Yoder.
Search Topics in Law and Religion
Explore topics such as COVID-19, Gender, Jewish Law, LGBTI+, Marriage, Religious Exemption, and Security
Anti-Extremism | Assisted Dying | Autocephaly | Children | Church-State Relations | Constitutional Space | COVID-19 | Death Penalty | Definition of Religion | Digitalization | Discrimination | Equality | Extremism | Family | Family Law | Freedom of Expression | Gender | Genocide | Hagia Sophia | Human Dignity | Human Rights | In Memoriam | Interfaith Dialogue | Islamic Law | Jewish Law | LGBTI+ | Marriage | Minorities | Peacebuilding | Pluralism | Politics | Race | Reasonable Accommodation | Religious Autonomy | Religious Exemption | Religious Freedom | Religious Institutions | Religious Law | Rule of Law | Secularity | Security | Social Service | Ukraine | Russia | War | Digitalization | Humanitarian Aid | Religion and Constitution
Subscribe to our Monthly Newsletter
Fill out the form below to receive updates on topics in law and religion.