Abstract
The Utrecht Law Review is an open-access peer-reviewed journal which aims to offer an international academic platform for cross-border legal research. In the first place, this concerns research in which the boundaries of the classic branches of the law (private law, criminal law, constitutional and administrative law, European and public international law) are crossed and connections are made between these areas of the law, amongst others from a comparative law perspective. In addition, the journal welcomes research in which classic law is brought face to face with not strictly legal disciplines such as philosophy, economics, political sciences and public administration science.The journal was established in 2005 and is affiliated to the Utrecht University School of Law. If you wish to receive e-mail alerts please join the mailing list.
Highlights
The heated debates on secularism in social sciences, politics and, increasingly, in political theory and political philosophy have infected legal theory, constitutional law and comparative constitutionalism
The first position, defended most vividly and outspokenly by András Sajó – a Judge at the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) and Professor at the Central European University in Budapest – tries to overcome the absence of ‘secularism’ in most liberal-democratic constitutions[5] and to streamline their messiness by developing a ‘more robust theory of constitutional secularism’ to remedy the fact that ‘most democracies are without a strong normative theory or practice of constitutional secularism’, to present a ‘clear agenda’ and a ‘coordinated action plan’ in order to ‘defend’ vulnerable constitutions against the threats of (‘strong’) religions
The Court itself endorses serious limitations of public debates and political initiatives, movements and parties that aim at deep and structural changes in the economic, societal, political and legal structure and institutions which are clearly compatible with the constitutional essentials or the core of liberal-democratic constitutionalism and which explicitly refrain from using force as a means of achieving these aims
Summary
The heated debates on secularism in social sciences, politics and, increasingly, in political theory and political philosophy have infected legal theory, constitutional law and comparative constitutionalism. Speaking, it may be ‘too late to ban the word “secular”’ or to remove ‘secularism’ from our cultural vocabulary. The first position, defended most vividly and outspokenly by András Sajó – a Judge at the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) and Professor at the Central European University in Budapest – tries to overcome the absence of ‘secularism’ in most liberal-democratic constitutions[5] and to streamline their messiness by developing a ‘more robust theory of constitutional secularism’ to remedy the fact that ‘most democracies are without a strong normative theory or practice of constitutional secularism’, to present a ‘clear agenda’ and a ‘coordinated action plan’ in order to ‘defend’ vulnerable constitutions against the threats of (‘strong’) religions.
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