Published: 2018-08-29

The Liberal and Communitarian Grounds of Religious Freedom and their Consequences

Łukasz Mirocha
Zeszyty Prawnicze
Section: Artykuły
https://doi.org/10.21697/zp.2018.18.2.08

Abstract

Summary

 

Many legal scholars have claimed that historically religious freedom could be considered the “prototype” of all the other human rights. Thus it is not surprising that the well-established status of religious freedom is present in the international legal documents on human rights. Religious freedom has a very strong foundation in positive law, alongside freedom of conscience and freedom of thought. However, recently its status as a special right has been denied more and more often. This is mainly due to problems with establishing the grounds for its special status: it is hard to say what sets religion apart from other, non-religious views, while at the same time maintaining the special status and privileges of religion as against other views which are not guaranteed such privileges. This article attempts to reconstruct and analyse the grounds for religious freedom presented by two antithetical trends in the contemporary philosophy of law, viz. liberalism and communitarianism.

Keywords:

human rights, neutrality of the state, state-church relations, freedom of religion, Ronald Dworkin, Michael Sandel.

Download files

Citation rules

Mirocha, Łukasz. (2018). The Liberal and Communitarian Grounds of Religious Freedom and their Consequences. Zeszyty Prawnicze, 18(2), 195–214. https://doi.org/10.21697/zp.2018.18.2.08

Cited by / Share


This website uses cookies for proper operation, in order to use the portal fully you must accept cookies.