God in the Irish Constitution

Dr. David Kenny is Assistant Professor of Law at Trinity College Dublin

Upon first reading, God, and some of his consistent personages, plays a striking and prominent role in the Irish Constitution. But like many things, the meaning and effect of this is not as clear and as obvious as one might think, and the real story of the God in the Irish Constitution is more complicated than one might initially assume.

A Godly Preamble

In their first week of law school, I have my Constitutional Law students read the Irish Constitution and ask for their impressions. For almost all of them, it is their first time reading the text in full. Every year, multiple students note the religiosity of the text as the most striking feature. Before even that most common invocation of popular power “We, the people,” our Constitution’s Preamble begins with a very different invocation:

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God in Secular Constitutions

Dmytro Vovk, Director of the Center for the Rule of Law and Religion Studies at Yaroslav Mudryi National Law University and co-editor of Talk About: Law and Religion

Carl Schmitt points out in Political Theology that “all significant concepts of the modern theory of the state are secularized theological concepts.” Likewise, many doctrines and concepts of modern constitutionalism have theological roots and have been developed in the dialogue with religious tradition. Religion has never fully disappeared from texts of secular constitutions—it lingers in symbolic references to God, religious formulas in presidential oaths, constitutional agreements with churches of majorities, and so on.

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Freedom of Religion or Belief—Creating the Constitutional Space for Fundamental Freedoms: A New Book on Religious Freedom and its Protection from the Perspective of Several Jurisdictions

Neville Rochow QC is an Austrialian Barrister,  Associate Professor (Adjunct) at the University of Adelaide Law School, and a Senior Fellow at the International Center for Law and Religion Studies.

It is a genuine pleasure to accept the invitation to contribute this introductory essay to the blog series on the constitutional space for freedom of religion. “Constitutional Space for Freedom of Religion” has been a project that culminated in the book of essays which Paul Babie, Brett Scharffs, and I edited: Freedom of Religion or Belief—Creating the Constitutional Space for Fundamental Freedoms (Edward Elgar 2020).  (more…)

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