Law and Religion

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This panel will take a comparative perspective on the place of religion and secularism in modern constitutionalism. Invited speakers will consider a number of models, drawn from Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and Europe, and will raise questions about the extent to which liberal constitutionalism is consistent with constitutional designs that privilege a particular religion in various ways. Invited speakers will also consider the extent to which the principle of secularism should be and is being placed beyond the realm of democratic debate, for example by being formally entrenched in unamendable constitutional clauses (as in Turkey) or as a feature within the constitution’s "basic structure" and therefore implicitly entrenched (as in India). This panel will enrich our comparative understanding of constitutionalism and religion, and it will moreover unsettle our conventional understandings of this relationship in American constitutional law.