Law JournalFeeds

Abstract  Traditionally, liberals have confined religion to the sphere of the ‘private’ or ‘non-political’. However, recent debates
over the place of religious symbols in public spaces, state financing of faith schools, and tax relief for religious organisations
suggest that this distinction is not particularly useful in easing the tension between liberal commitments to equality on
the one hand, and freedom of religion on the other. This article deals with one aspect of this debate, which concerns whether
members of religious communities should receive exemptions from regulations that place a distinctively heavy burden on them.
Drawing on Habermas’ understanding of churches as ‘communities of interpretation’, we explore possible alternatives to both
the ‘rule-and-exemption’ approach and the ‘neutralist’ approach. Our proposal rests on the idea of mutual learning between
secular and religious perspectives. On this interpretation, what is required is (i) the generation and maintenance of public
spaces in which there could be discussion and dialogue about particular cases, and (ii) evaluation of whether the basic conditions
of moral discourse are present in these spaces. Thus deliberation becomes a touchstone for the building of a shared democratic
ethos.

Abstract  Acts of civil disobedience and conscientious objection provide valuable indications of the congruence of political outcomes
with citizens’ conceptions of justice and the good. As their primary concern is substantive, their logic seems extraneous
to procedural approaches to justice. Accordingly, it has often been argued that these latter condemn citizens to a ‘deaf-and-blind’
acceptance of the outcomes of agreed procedures. A closer analysis of such acts of contestation shall reveal that although,
for proceduralism, the outcomes of just procedures cannot be contested as unjust, they may be contested on the ground of values other than justice, such as someone’s religious/ethical allegiances. Proceduralism
about justice will be thus shown to be consistent with the commitment to realising certain outcome-oriented values.