Today’s Technologies’ Apparent Neutrality and Freedom of Thought, Conscience, and Religion

Yulia Razmetaeva is the Head of the Center for Law, Ethics, and Digital Technologies at Yaroslav Mudryi National Law University (Ukraine)

We used to separate social life and face-to-face communications, as well as the country’s political life from what’s going on inside our gadgets. We appear to somehow separate the “people’s world” from the digital one. The truth of the matter, however, is that technologies have become so advanced they’ve embraced every aspect of the “people’s world.” Technologies’ influence is immense.

Having spread far beyond the limits of the digital world, technologies can literally define our lives, and not only in terms of everyday habits and preferences but also concerning issues important to society as democracy, rule of law, and human rights. The Cambridge Analytica case showed how dangerous it is to underestimate the impact of profiling and artificial contradictions in social media on elections. New technologies contribute to the fact that people find themselves in filter bubbles and spend more and more time with people who have similar views, rather than those who have different ones, which leads to narrow-mindedness, tunnel vision, and, therefore, intolerance.

(more…)

Continue Reading Today’s Technologies’ Apparent Neutrality and Freedom of Thought, Conscience, and Religion

Religious Rulings and Nonreligious Judges: The Importance of Legal Education

Andrea Pin is Associate Professor of Comparative Public Law, University of Padua, and Senior Fellow at the Center for the Study of Law & Religion Emory University

“The rule that you are to love your neighbour becomes in law, you must not injure your neighbour; and the lawyer’s question, Who is my neighbour? receives a restricted reply. You must take reasonable care to avoid acts or omissions which you can reasonably foresee would be likely to injure your neighbour. Who, then, in law, is my neighbour? The answer seems to be–persons who are so closely and directly affected by my act that I ought reasonably to have them in contemplation as being so affected when I am directing my mind to the acts or omissions which are called in question.”

This is Lord Atkins’s starting point in one of the most famous and important rulings of the House of Lords of the 20th century. Donoghoue v. Stevenson (1932) was a landmark judgment that set the limits of liability for negligence in a highly-industrialized society. Lord Atkins found it obvious to seek guidance on the issue of liability in Jesus’s oft-repeated statement that one should love her neighbor as herself. The idea of loving your neighbor was not just a moral compass—it was also a legal compass. The only contentious part was “who” had to be considered as a “neighbour.”

(more…)

Continue Reading Religious Rulings and Nonreligious Judges: The Importance of Legal Education

Judges and Their Religions

In this series, we provide different perspectives on religion and judging. Five contributors, academics and a U.S. federal judge explore religious diversity and the judiciary, interplays between religious convictions and judicial ethics, and the role of religion and religious beliefs in professional and personal biographies of judges.

The series starts with Jeremy Patrick’s elaboration on interplays between religious diversity and the composition of the High Court of Australia. David G. Campbell discusses public concerns about possible tensions between religious adherence and the judiciary oath and argues that religious devotion can be consistent with good judging. Based on the examples of Israel and Egypt, Andrea Pin demonstrates how judges’ religious law-illiteracy can give a secular push to legal systems with the religious component.

Based on the example of the South African Supreme Court’s Chief Justice Mogoeng Mogoeng, Christine Venter addresses the obligation of judges to separate their personal religious convictions and the legal reasoning they provide in their decisions. David Kenny explores the biography of Brian Walsh, a prominent Irish justice and a judge of the Strasbourg Court, and the role his Catholic background plays in his jurisprudence.

(more…)

Continue Reading Judges and Their Religions