| Religion, Secularism, and Constitutional Democracy Contributor(s): Cohen, Jean (Editor), Laborde, Cécile (Editor) |
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ISBN: 0231168713 ISBN-13: 9780231168717 Publisher: Columbia University Press OUR PRICE: $41.58 Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats Published: December 2015 |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Religion | Religion, Politics & State - Political Science | Political Ideologies - Democracy - Political Science | Human Rights |
| Dewey: 322.1 |
| LCCN: 2015014532 |
| Series: Religion, Culture, and Public Life |
| Physical Information: 0.9" H x 6" W x 8.9" (1.35 lbs) 464 pages |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: Polarization between political religionists and militant secularists on both sides of the Atlantic is on the rise. Critically engaging with traditional secularism and religious accommodationism, this collection introduces a constitutional secularism that robustly meets contemporary challenges. It identifies which connections between religion and the state are compatible with the liberal, republican, and democratic principles of constitutional democracy and assesses the success of their implementation in the birthplace of political secularism: the United States and Western Europe. Approaching this issue from philosophical, legal, historical, political, and sociological perspectives, the contributors wage a thorough defense of their project's theoretical and institutional legitimacy. Their work brings fresh insight to debates over the balance of human rights and religious freedom, the proper definition of a nonestablishment norm, and the relationship between sovereignty and legal pluralism. They discuss the genealogy of and tensions involving international legal rights to religious freedom, religious symbols in public spaces, religious arguments in public debates, the jurisdiction of religious authorities in personal law, and the dilemmas of religious accommodation in national constitutions and public policy when it violates international human rights agreements or liberal-democratic principles. If we profoundly rethink the concepts of religion and secularism, these thinkers argue, a principled adjudication of competing claims becomes possible. |
Contributor Bio(s): Laborde, Cecile: - Cécile Laborde (PhD, Politics, Oxford) is Professor of Political Theory at University College London. She is the author of Critical Republicanism: The Hijab Controversy and Political Philosophy (Oxford, 2008), Français, encore un effort pour être républicains (Seuil, 2010), Pluralist Thought and the State in Britain and France, 1900-1925 (Macmillan, 2000), and Liberalism's Religion (Harvard, forthcoming). She has also edited and coedited a number of works, including (with Jean Cohen) Religion, Secularism, and Democratic Constitutionalism (Columbia, 2016). I chose her as a reader because of her expertise in secularism, republicanism and multiculturalism, theories of law and the state, and global justice.Cohen, Jean: - Jean L. Cohen (PhD, Sociology, The New School) is the Nell and Herbert M. Singer Professor of Contemporary Civilization and Political Theory at Columbia University. She is the author of Civil Society and Political Theory (MIT, 1992); Class and Civil Society: The Limits of Marxian Critical Theory (Massachusetts, 1982); Regulating Intimacy: a New Legal Paradigm (Princeton, 2002); and Globalization and Sovereignty: Rethinking Legitimacy and Legality (Cambridge, 2012). |