Religious Tribunals Research Articles

A Theory of a State? How Civil Law Ended Legal Pluralism in Modern Egypt

AbstractʿAbd al-Razzāq al-Sanhūrī (d. 1971), the father of the Egyptian legal code, theorized a relationship between dīn (religion) and dawla (state) that was key to his project. In this relationship, al-Sanhūrī posited a delineation between the spheres of dīn and dawla that allowed him to map these categories onto the existing distinction between matters of ʿibādāt (acts of worship) and muʾāmalāt (transactions) in Islamic law (fiqh). I propose that Islamic jurisprudential distinctions between ʿibādāt and muʿāmalāt—for al-Sanhūrī—was the ideal medium to maintain and police the borderlines between religion and state in the postcolonial Egyptian state. Al-Sanhūrī's objective was to keep the domain of dīn outside of state sanction and to facilitate a transition whereby the state's legal institutions assumed exclusive lawmaking powers based on its own independent legal reasoning in Islamic law (ijtihād). I argue that al-Sanhūrī was a committed comparatist, not a reformer of Islamic law. Al-Sanhūrī's legal project should be viewed as a faithful commitment to French comparative law as a method of legal inquiry and a reflection of his nationalist agenda of creating a unified legal order that cannot exist without relying upon indigenous forms of law and culture. Al-Sanhūrī saw Khedival legal pluralism as an obstacle for national sovereignty. As a result of the institutional and legal readjustments from the 1920s through 1950s in Egypt, al-Sanhūrī did not see a future for Islamic law in the emerging legal state apparatus outside of civil law strictures and insisted that Islamic courts and religious tribunals for Jews and Christians must be subsumed under nationalized secular state courts.

2. Les Juifs de Pologne et les tribunaux d’honneur

“I am ready to make the journey,” wrote Henryk Z. in 1948 in a letter to the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw. Having left Poland after the Kielce pogrom, Henryk Z. was in the process of rebuilding his life as a DP in Stuttgart and awaiting further emigration approval. Nevertheless, he was volunteering to return to Poland to testify against a fellow Jewish survivor, a member of the Radom Judenrat, whom he accused of sending his wife to her death. Postwar files of both Polish state courts and Jewish tribunals, including the Civic Court by the Central Committee of Jews in Poland, the Central Court and Rehabilitation Commission in Munich, provisory tribunals in small DP camps, as well as ad hoc religious tribunals, courts by political organizations, and judging panels set up in local Jewish committees and Landsmanchaften are filled with such documents. This evidence shows that, to find peace by pursuing justice (and revenge) against those accused of sabotaging their own community, people were ready to cross the Iron Curtain, and despite all the hardships it entailed, return to places from which they had both physically and emotionally only recently escaped. My article will discuss how in the immediate post-war period, Polish Jews (witnesses, defendants, and court audiences) as well as their stories and documents crossed borders between the East and West and how this transnational dynamic impacted the practice of both Jewish honor courts and Polish state courts and shaped communal stories of suffering in the Holocaust.

Muslim Personal Laws and the Accommodation of Minorities: The Need to Better Balance Individual Rights and Group Autonomy in Singapore

AbstractThe accommodation of religious personal law systems is an issue that has arisen in many countries with significant Muslim minorities. The types of accommodations can range from direct incorporation into the state legal system to mere recognition of religious tribunals as private organs. Different forms of accommodation raise different types of legal, social, and political issues. Focusing on the case of Singapore, I examine one form of accommodation which entails the direct incorporation of this law regulating marriage, divorce, and inheritance for Muslims into the state system. Administered by the Administration of the Muslim Law Act, 1966, the Muslim law binds Muslims unless they abjure Islam. The resulting pluralistic legal system is deemed necessary to realize the aspirations of and give respect to the Muslim minority community, the majority of whom are constitutionally acknowledged as indigenous to the country. This Article examines the ramifications of this arrangement on the rights and well-being of members of this community in the context of change. It argues that, while giving autonomy to the community to determine its personal law and advancing group accommodation, the arrangement denies individuals the right to their choice of law, a problem exacerbated by traditionalism and the lack of democratic process in this domain. Consequently, the Muslim law pales in comparison to the civil law for non-Muslims. The rise of religious resurgence since the 1970s has but compounded the problem. How the system can accommodate the Muslim personal law without compromising the rights of individual Muslims is also discussed.

Loci of Leadership: The Quasi-Judicial Authority of Shariah Tribunals in the British Muslim Community

Leadership and authority were two central themes in the mission statement of the first ever Shariah tribunal to emerge in the UK. When the Islamic Shariah Council was established in 1982, it noted that its founding meeting had been attended by Muslim scholars from a number of mosques in the UK who represented the major schools of Islamic law. This ensured in its own words that it was widely accepted as an authoritative body with regards to Islamic law and that it was therefore able to cater to the basic religious needs of the Muslim community. Since their emergence in the 1980s, Shariah tribunals have played an important role in guiding the Muslim community through the provision of religious services. This paper seeks to enrich the literature on Shariah tribunals by critically assessing how such tribunals have used their expertise in Islamic law to wield quasi-judicial authority in the British Muslim community, within a legal system which does not directly grant legal jurisdiction to religious tribunals. The paper highlights the distinctive characteristics of the authority which Shariah tribunals exercise as religious institutions, which distinguish them from the secular courts of the state despite the judicial functions which both share in common.

Dilemmas of Civil Tribunals in Formulating Their Positions toward Religious Tribunals

The paper addresses the dilemmas of civil-secular tribunals when formulating a position toward decisions of religious tribunals with regard to the custody of children. The paper examines the approach of the Israeli Supreme Court toward rulings of Sharia and rabbinical courts, comparing them with similar tensions in the US, Canada, and the UK. Civil courts appear to be entirely committed to civil, non-religious law. Religious tribunals, however, although committed to act in accordance with the fundamental principles of state civil law, are also obligated to act in accordance with religious law. The paper argues that the extent of the above tension is much more limited than it appears at first glance. There is an attempt to reconcile the need to protect women and children on one hand with freedom of religion, multiculturalism, and the rights of ethnic minorities and immigrants, on the other.

Some comments on the current (and future) status of Muslim personal law in South Africa

The state law of South Africa consists of the common law and the customary law. However, in reality there exist various cultural and religious communities who lead their private lives outside of state law. For example, the Muslim community in South Africa is a close-knit community which lives according to their own customs and usages. Muslims are subject to informal religious tribunals whose decisions and orders are neither recognised nor reviewable by the South African courts.
 The non-recognition of certain aspects of Muslim personal law causes unnecessary hardships, especially for women. A Muslim woman is often in a "catch two" situation. For example, on the one hand her attempts to divorce her husband in terms of Muslim law may be foiled by the relevant religious tribunal and, on the other hand, the South African courts may not provide the necessary relief, because they might not recognise the validity of her Muslim marriage. 
 Increasingly, South African courts are faced with complex issues regarding the Muslim community. The last few years there has been a definite change in the courts' attitude with regard to the recognition of certain aspects of Muslim personal law. Contrary to pre1994 court cases, the recent court cases attempt to develop the common law to give recognition to certain aspects of Muslim personal law. This article attempts to give an overview of the recent case law that dealt with issues regarding the recognition of aspects of Muslim personal law. 
 Another issue, which eventuates from the current situation, is whether the South African legal order should continue to have a dualistic legal order or whether we should opt for a unified legal order or even a pluralistic legal order. In order to address this issue, some comments on the current status of Muslim personal law will be made and, finally, in order to contribute to the debate regarding the recognition of Muslim personal law, optional models for the recognition of Muslim personal law will briefly be evaluated.

Relational Autonomy and Religious Tribunals

Academic writing on the place and status of religious tribunals in western societies has focused upon the ‘minorities within minorities’ debate: the extent to which States should intervene to ensure that the citizenship rights of female group members are protected and that religious tribunals do not discriminate on grounds of sex. In a number of recent publications following the Cardiff research on Social Cohesion and Civil Law: Marriage, Divorce and Religious Courts, it has been suggested that the concept of consent should be a key focus in determining whether the State should intervene. However, this article asks instead whether the focus should be on the question of autonomy. In particular, this article examines the need to understand the debate concerning religious tribunals within the wider context of changes within family law where an emphasis has been placed upon individual autonomy. It also compares, explores and critiques the concept of ‘relational autonomy’ as discussed by Jonathan Herring in the context of family law. We agree that developing a concept of autonomy based on the forming of relationships rather than the usual focus on the autonomy of the religious group or on the individual autonomy of those who use religious tribunals provides a way forward. However, we propose a modification of relational autonomy using relational contract theory to employ a relational approach that is ultimately rooted in contract theory. We conclude that Feminist Relational Contract Theory (FRCT) – a theory previously applied to prenuptial agreements –provides, the most appropriate framework in which power imbalances within religious tribunals can be recognised.

Desecularisation and the ‘faith agenda’ in an era of austerity: their impact on women’s and girls’ rights in the UK

ABSTRACTThis article tackles the conjoined gender impacts of two state-led agendas in the UK – the ‘faith agenda’ and the ‘austerity agenda’. We argue that the faith agenda has revisioned the relationship between the state and its citizens into a communitarian relationship mediated by religious organisations, while the austerity agenda has led to the withdrawal of state resources from key areas of social welfare provision and displaced responsibility for social welfare on to a growing number of unaccountable religious organisations. Together this has strengthened the position and role of conservative patriarchal religious leaders and organisations, while diminishing the secular spaces and resources available to women to exit violent and abusive situations, to access their rights in a range of fields from housing, social care, the law, and education, and impacted their ability to exercise full autonomy. In particular, this article highlights the issue of access to justice, and demonstrates that as the state rolls back funding and support structures for abused women and for legal aid in general, religious tribunals have gained prominence among state representatives and are stepping into spaces like marriage, family law, and child custody with devastating consequences for the safety and welfare of women and children.

Mendesain Kewenangan Kekuasaan Kehakiman Setelah Perubahan UUD 1945

After the Amendment of the 1945 Constitution of The Republic of Indonesia, The Judicial Power has become the most fundamentally power and also as a part of the axis of power which its function is to enforce justice. According to the Amendment of the 1945 Constitution of The Republic of Indonesia, the judicial power in the structure of state power, is still placed at the power that is free from intervention or influence from other power in exercising its authority. In the structure of state power, after the Amendment of the 1945 Constitution of The Republic of Indonesia, the judicial power shall be implemented by a Supreme Court and judicial bodies underneath it in the form of public courts, religious affairs courts, military tribunals, and state administrative courts, and by a Constitutional Court. The Amendment of the 1945 Constitution of The Republic of Indonesia, also spawned a new institution, beside Constitutional Court which its function is relating to judicial power, namely an independent Judicial Commission which shall possess the authority to propose candidates for appointment as justices of the Supreme Court and shall possess further authority to maintain and ensure the honour, dignity and behaviour of judges.

A Comment on the Exclusive Jurisdiction of Domestic Religious Tribunals in South Africa:De Lange v The Presiding Bishop of Methodist Church of Southern Africa

The idea that certain matters are completely outside the scrutiny of South Africa courts will be a challenging one, predictably controversial and difficult to sustain given a background of exhaustive reach of the legal system into all areas of societal endeavour. If nothing else, the human rights jurisdiction of South African courts, especially the horizontal application of human rights, ensures that South African courts accept and scrutinize all matters that come before them. Even though the courts have shown considerable deference to executive legislative and private determinations, this would appear to be a matter of substantive adjudication rather than a wholesale abdication of its jurisdiction. It is, therefore, a challenging proposition that internal doctrinal disputes of churches and by extension religious associations are outside the jurisdictional remit of South African courts. In De Lange v The Presiding Bishop of the Methodist Church of Southern Africa [2014] ZASCA 151, the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) declared that a court should become involved in matters concerning the rules adopted by churches only ‘where it is strictly necessary for it to do so’ and that the internal rules of a church which are matters of religious doctrine fall within the exclusive realm of churches, and therefore lie outside the jurisdiction of the courts. This comment asks whether a proper respect of the freedom of religion demands an exclusive and/or substantive deference to domestic religious arbitration.

Domestic Violence (Q.4:34) and the Qurrrnic Model: Q.4:34 Hermeneutical Analysis of Verse 34 and the Surrounding Controversy

This paper examines the hermeneutics of the Qur’ānic verse Q.4:34 from surah, An-Nisa (The Women) in particular, as the most controversial verse relating to the issue of domestic violence. Q.2:27 shows that it is essential for us to protect human rights, in particular, the Qur’ān divides these into huqūq Allah (obligations with regard to God relating to prayer, charity etc.) and huqūq al-‘Ibād (rights of individuals).There is considerable controversy surrounding this verse which seemingly supports ‘wife beating’. This paper highlights the fact that this verse is often taken out of context and the Qur’ānic position is confused with the lack of accurate translations for English readers. There is also a misconception that Islam oppresses women both in public and private spheres. In private spheres, ‘wife beating’ verse is often cited and this misconception exists amongst not just non-Muslims but also Muslims. This study treat the Qur’ān-Sunnā as complementary sources to each other because this has important implications with reference to ‘wife beating’ verse in the Qur’ān (Q.4:34). This paper examines the lexical semantics of verse 4:34. This paper argues that Sunnā demonstrates that Islam prohibits violence against women and any violence ultimately goes against the Qur’ānic model. This paper also examines the semantics of mainstream scholars, feminist and contemporary scholars’ debate on this verse. Muslim Religious tribunals in the UK have restricted access due to polemic attraction in the media and for research purposes and solving the problem was a challenge and praxeological/Practice Based Approach (PBA) was the only way to obtain an ‘insider’s view’. PBA further enabled to investigate the specifics of discrimination that occur. The interpretative hermeneutics discourse of Q.4:34 leave these distortions open to political scrutiny. The Qur’ānic model has a potential to engender a more egalitarian (gender neutral) Islamic legal theory. Any Islamic legal theory must recognise that, the Qur’ān does not provide a systematic, historical and comprehensive system of universal ethics that can be simply retrieved or discovered.

Clash of Shari’ā with National Law

This paper undertakes a praxiological study (practice based approach) of Muslim “religious tribunals”, Shari’ā Councils and Muslim Arbitration Tribunals (MATs) not part of the UK law. Some Western scholars maintain that traditional shari’ā law is discriminatory on issues of gender equality, in particular, with reference to Muslim family law. It is important to examine the shift from the “true narratives” of the Qur’ānic Model (QM) to the “living practice”; co-construction of “true narratives” with the QM.This paper argues that discrimination can be eliminated through the QM by adopting the interpretive/hermeneutical approach. Praxiological/practice based approach (PBA) in this study has identified that discrimination does exist in the “living practice” of traditional shari’ā law.This study treats the Qur’ān-Sunnā as complementary sources to each other because this has important implications with reference to “wife beating” verse in the Qur’ān (Q.4:34). PBA enabled to identify the specifics of discrimination that occur. Thesecular-religious debate has been politically influenced, for example, inequality issue for women seeking advice from RTs. BaronessCox has introduced the Arbitration and Mediation (Equality) Services Bill (HL) 2014-15 that went through its first reading on 11 June 2014. The Bill addresses gender discrimination within Muslim religious tribunals and the parallel legal system.

The Qurranic Model (QM): A Praxiological Study of Religious Tribunals in the United Kingdom (UK)

This paper undertakes a praxiological study (practice based approach) of Muslim ‘religious tribunals,’ Shari’ā Councils and Muslim Arbitration Tribunals (MATs) not part of the UK law. Some Western scholars maintain that traditional shari’ā law is discriminatory on issues of gender equality, in particular, with reference to Muslim family law. It is important to examine the shift from the ‘true narratives’ of the Qur’ānic Model (QM) to the ‘living practice;’ co-construction of ‘true narratives’ with the QM. It is my contention that discrimination can be eliminated through the QM by adopting the interpretive/hermeneutical approach. Praxiological/Practice Based Approach (PBA) has identified that discrimination does exist in the ‘living practice’ of traditional shari’ā law. I treat the Qur’ān-Sunnah as complementary sources to each other because this has important implications with reference to ‘wife beating’ verse in the Qur’an (Q.4:34). Religious tribunals (RTs) have restricted access for research purposes and solving my problem is a challenge and PBA was the only way to obtain an ‘insider’s view.’ PBA uses practitioner case excerpts and this gives insight into the specifics of non-compliance, emergence of pluralism within Islam and legal practice of shari’ā law and factors such as the judges’ beliefs and values are examined. PBA further enabled me to investigate the specifics of discrimination or inequalities that occur. The Qur’ānic Model has a potential to engender a more egalitarian (gender neutral) Islamic legal theory. Any Islamic legal theory must recognise that, the Qur’an does not provide a systematic, historical and comprehensive system of universal ethics that can be simply retrieved or discovered.The secular-religious debate has been politically influenced, for example, inequality issue for women seeking advice from RTs. Baroness Cox has sponsored the Arbitration and Mediation (Equality) Services Bill that has gone through its first reading on 14 May 2013. It is important to understand different cultures and different ‘versions of Islam’ emerging in policy formulation on a national and international level in the 21st Century.

Britain's Religious Tribunals: 'Joint Governance' in Practice

In recent years, there have been a number of moral panics in Western societies about the existence of religious courts and tribunals in general and Shariah law in particular. In England and Wales, these concerns came to the fore following the Archbishop of Canterbury’s 2008 lecture on ‘Civil Law and Religious Law in England’. In that lecture, the Archbishop drew upon the work of the Canadian scholar Ayelet Shachar endorsing her concept of ‘transformative accommodation’. In this article, we return to the work of Shachar in the light of our recent empirical study which examined the divorce jurisdiction of three religious tribunals in detail: a Jewish Beth Din; a matrimonial tribunal of the Roman Catholic Church; and a Muslim Shariah Council. We suggest that the focus upon Shachar’s concept of ‘transformative accommodation’ by the Archbishop and subsequent commentators is unfortunate given that Shachar actually proposes ‘transformative accommodation’ as just one variant of what she refers to as ‘joint governance’ (albeit her preferred variant). We propose that the concept of ‘joint governance’ and the other variants can be developed in a way that could prove to be more useful than ‘transformative accommodation’.

Religious Tribunals in Democratic States: Lessons from the Israeli Rabbinical Courts

In democratic countries where the law might be influenced by religious communities, family law cases can present one of the most sensitive and complex challenges. Religious laws governing personal status and the supervision of family relations are vital components of many religions and, in some cases, crucial to the cultural survival of the religious community. However, the family laws of some religions are discriminatory towards women, same-sex couples, people of other religions, and other groups. Currently, there is heated political and scholarly debate about the tension between the norms of multiculturalism, which dictate that religious communities be allowed to preserve their values and culture, including through autonomy over family law, and liberal norms prohibiting the discrimination that religious family law can perpetrate.One of the best known liberal advocates for restricting discriminatory cultural practices of minority groups was Susan Moller Okin. Okin maintained that many cultural minorities are more patriarchal than the surrounding culture and that the female members of the patriarchal culture might be much better off were the culture into which they were born to become extinct, if, that is, it could not be altered so as to uphold women's equality. She pointed to religious personal law as one example of a sphere in which patriarchal cultures strive to maintain autonomy at the cost of women's and girls' freedom and basic rights. Consistent with her view, nation states should not give legal autonomy over family matters to patriarchal minorities unless these minorities reform their religious laws so as not to discriminate against or impair the rights of women and girls.

Privatizing Family Law in the Name of Religion

In pockets across the world, a movement has taken hold to allow fundamentalist1 religious norms, rather than state law, to govern family matters like divorce and inheritance. Many of these religious norms depart significantly from the state's background rules protecting individuals. Nonetheless, fundamentalist religious understandings are given the force of law, either by treating them as binding judgments arrived at through arbitration or by delegating to religious groups to decide family disputes, with nominal state oversight. This Essay explores the risks to two traditionally vulnerable groups, women and children, when the state delegates its traditional oversight of the family to religious authorities.2 To surface these risks, this Essay draws on two lived experiences of religious deference around the world. Specifically, this Essay examines the eighty-five Sharia courts operating in Great Britain today, which apply Islamic, not British, law to divorce and inheritance.3 It also examines the system of shared in Western Thrace, a section of Greece where three Mufti decide family disputes for a Muslim minority of 1 10,000 people.4 While this Essay spotlights experiments to enforce rather than civil understandings of family matters, numerous scholars have advocated for deference to the religious understandings of Christian, Jewish, and other faith groups as well.5 In both places, the civil law supplanted by fundamentalist religious norms would provide considerably more protection to individuals in two periods of great need, upon divorce and the death of a spouse. As this Essay documents, these protections for the vulnerable are hollowed out when harsh religious understandings displace the state's more protective rules, whether in fundamentalist families or fundamentalist families of other faiths. Drawing on systems of deference operating today, Part I shows how women at divorce stand to lose custody of adolescent children and face near certain poverty if certain schools of law govern the proceeding. Part II assesses how a woman's ability to exit a marital relationship, especially a violent one, may be affected by religious deference. This Part argues that religious deference undercuts the state's ability to police family violence. Part ?? then shows that upon a spouse's death, women face equally grave and devastating results under law. The wealth a woman would otherwise receive upon her husband's death under civil law shrivels under law to a mere fraction of the decedent's estate, leaving many women financially at risk. Part IV rejects two articulated justifications for schemes of religious deference despite the inequitable treatment of women - namely, that a woman's natal family will support her financially when the husband does not and that women have voluntarily accepted these outcomes. Policymakers considering schemes of deference in their own countries should consider these inequities before giving effect to extreme religious views that will trap some women in poverty or abusive relationships.6 I. LIVED EXPERIENCES OF RELIGIOUS DEFERENCE Two systems of religious deference operating today provide a snapshot of the risks to women and children in such systems. These lived experiences in Great Britain and Western Thrace demonstrate poignantly that removing state protections from the family is fraught with peril. A. Great Britain 's Embrace of Islamic Divorce In 2008, the British government quietly sanctioned the powers for sharia judges to rule on cases ranging from divorce and financial disputes to those involving domestic violence.7 This system of religious arbitration took root despite a firestorm of controversy that erupted in early 2008 when the Archbishop of Canterbury called for a plural jurisdiction in which Muslims could choose to resolve family disputes in religious tribunals or in British courts. …

Some comments on the current (and future) status of Muslim personal law in South Africa

The state law of South Africa consists of the common law and the customary law. However, in reality there exist various cultural and religious communities who lead their private lives outside of state law. For example, the Muslim community in South Africa is a close-knit community which lives according to their own customs and usages. Muslims are subject to informal religious tribunals whose decisions and orders are neither recognised nor reviewable by the South African courts. The non-recognition of certain aspects of Muslim personal law causes unnecessary hardships, especially for women. A Muslim woman is often in a "catch two" situation. For example, on the one hand her attempts to divorce her husband in terms of Muslim law may be foiled by the relevant religious tribunal and, on the other hand, the South African courts may not provide the necessary relief, because they might not recognise the validity of her Muslim marriage. Increasingly, South African courts are faced with complex issues regarding the Muslim community. The last few years there has been a definite change in the courts' attitude with regard to the recognition of certain aspects of Muslim personal law. Contrary to pre-1994 court cases, the recent court cases attempt to develop the common law to give recognition to certain aspects of Muslim personal law. This article attempts to give an overview of the recent case law that dealt with issues regarding the recognition of aspects of Muslim personal law. Another issue, which eventuates from the current situation, is whether the South African legal order should continue to have a dualistic legal order or whether we should opt for a unified legal order or even a pluralistic legal order. In order to address this issue, some comments on the current status of Muslim personal law will be made and, finally, in order to contribute to the debate regarding the recognition of Muslim personal law, optional models for the recognition of Muslim personal law will briefly be evaluated.

Interfaith Legal Advisers Network: Religious Courts and Tribunals

Interfaith Legal Advisers Network: Religious Courts and Tribunals

The Enforceability of Arbitration Decisions Made by Muslim Religious Tribunals: examining The Beth Din Precedent

The figures of both Moses and Muhammad stand in the United States Supreme Court, included among the great lawgivers of history depicted in two friezes along the North and South walls of the Courtroom. Moses, who is seen carrying the Ten Commandments, is honored as the “prophet, lawgiver, and judge of the Israelites,” with the Supreme Court's tourist information sheet explaining that “Mosaic Law” is “based on the Torah, the first five books of the Old Testament.” Muhammad is described as the “Prophet of Islam” and carries both a sword and the Qur'an, the “primary source of Islamic law.”Yet the parallel depictions of these two prophets in the U.S. Supreme Court belie the very different respect that the laws they are associated with have received in the U.S. judicial system. Jewish law or legal principles are generally cited by courts with approval, often to add perceived moral and ethical authority to a court's decision. For example, in the U.S. Supreme Court's well-known Miranda v. Arizona decision, the Court declared that the privilege against self-incrimination was an ancient right, with analogues that could be found in the Bible, quoting the great medieval Jewish scholar Maimonides for support: “To sum up the matter, the principle that no man is to be declared guilty on his own admission is a divine decree.”

Religious Tribunals and the Ontario Arbitration Act, 1991: The Catalyst for Change

Religious Tribunals and the Ontario Arbitration Act, 1991: The Catalyst for Change