Religion & Law

This week I had the thoroughly enjoyable experience of participating in a symposium at the University of Pavia in Italy celebrating the publication of a new book on the law's treatment of religious and cultural diversity in Europe.  The conversation centered on liberty of conscience and what that means (and should mean) in European society today.  What struck me was the contrasting set of intellectual figures who serve as the touchstones for these sorts of conversations in Europe versus those in the United States.  When we talk about the liberty of conscience in the U.S., we tend to look to history (or even theology) initially, and figures such as James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, and Roger Williams will figure to crop up sooner or later.  In the conversation in Pavia, the figures referenced most frequently were: 1) John Rawls; 2) John Rawls; and 3) John Rawls.  Obviously, when Rawls is the starting point, the liberty of conscience will end up in some curious places.  One participant, for example, argued that a claim of conscience must be grounded in public reason; if not, the claim should be treated as a preference with no more force than other preferences. 

Another participant was more supportive of individual conscience-based claims for legal exemptions, and while he could defend group claims as the aggregation of individual claims, he could not find space within his framework for institutional claims.  The operating premise was that the state's authority is all-encompassing unless an individual (or a collection of indivduals) possess a sufficient countervailing interest to exempt herself from a particular exercise of authority.  Institutions do not fit because they are simply "sets of rules."  The notion of state power being limited in some non-instrumental way was not on the radar screen.

So while the hospitality of my hosts was fabulous, and the conversations challenging, I was reminded that the premises from which we begin the conversation have a significant impact on whether we have much to talk about.