State and Religion
Professor Gabriel
Andreescu
Religion has been a constant presence in the history of humanity, but
the evolution of Western democracies has limited the role of religious actors
within Western society. The process of secularization has been a companion of
the democratic transformation, and both have resulted in the emancipation of
women, and increased equality and freedom. Nowadays, religion proves to be again
a major factor in the national and international arena. How can we analyze its
place in our liberal democracies? Our “State and Religion” course takes a human
rights approach. As far as international human rights are concerned, “religious
beliefs present competing universalist ideologies which, by posing alternative
approaches, do indeed threaten the universalism of the idea of human rights.
Religious belief must therefore be made subordinate to the human rights
framework” (Evans, M.D., “Human Rights, Religious Liberty and the Universality
Debate”).
We will systematically analyze the jurisprudence of
the European Court for Human Rights regarding the freedom of thought,
conscience and religion. By examining the cases before the Strasbourg Court, we
will discuss the place of religion in public life, and the issues of children
and religion, women and religion, freedom of religion and institutional
settings, work without discrimination and religion, and freedoms and rights
within Religious organizations. We are interested mainly in those
manifestations of a pacifist belief, convictions defined as “those ideas based
on human knowledge and reasoning concerning the world, life society … which a
person adopts and professes according to the dictates of his or her conscience.
These ideas can more briefly be characterized as a person’s outlook on life
including, in particular, a concept of human behavior in society” (Arrowsmith
v United Kingdom (1981).
After discussing the arguments in the ECtHR
jurisprudence, we will start a mapping exercise of State-Religion relations in
all 47 countries of the Council of Europe, plus the US. We will focus on religious
symbols within state institutions; the funding of religious organizations;
religious education; religious services in the army, prisons, and hospitals.
Finally, we will focus on religious discrimination and repression in Europe and
North America, and take a look at religion in the world today.
Through individual and team research, students will
obtain a working knowledge of the norms and the realities of State-Religion
relations in the European and American democracies of today.
Skills. Your active participation in this course will teach
you how to:
· Do advanced search with HUDOC
· Elaborate arguments about the meaning of freedom of
thought, conscience, and religion
· Design policies in the field of State-Religion
relations in a specific national context
· Place State-Religion relations in Romania in the
European context, and propose a better status quo
· Develop know-how for participating as specialists
and/or activists in the national debate on the discrimination of religious or
non-religious actors
· Enrich your knowledge of democratic values
Constitutional
Law II: Civil Rights & Civil Liberties
Dr. Judithanne McLauchlan
Thomas Paine declared that a constitution is “to
liberty what a grammar is to language.” And, indeed, in the United States, the
source of our civil liberties is the Constitution, especially its first ten
amendments, known as the Bill of Rights.
In this course, we will study the constitutional basis
for civil liberties as well as the role of the Supreme Court in enforcing those
constitutionally protected rights. We
will immerse ourselves in the case law surrounding the freedoms guaranteed in
the Bill of Rights – the freedom of and from religion, the freedom of speech
and of the press, the freedom of association, the freedom from unreasonable
searches and seizures, the guarantee against self-accusation, the right to
counsel and other criminal procedure guarantees, the guarantee against cruel
and unusual punishment and the right of privacy – as well as the Fourteenth
Amendment guarantee of the equal protection of the laws. We will look at race
discrimination in education, affirmative action and reverse discrimination, as
well as non-racial classification and the equal protection of the laws.
In addition to teaching the student the substantive
content described above, the course will develop in the student a variety of
skills that will benefit him/her throughout life: the ability to read
analytically, to think rationally, to reason logically, to speak persuasively,
and to write clearly and concisely.
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