Why Religious Freedom Matters for Democracy: Comparative Reflections from Britain and France for a Democratic Vivre Ensemble

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Should an employee be allowed to wear a religious symbol at work Should a religious employer be allowed to impose constraints on employees private lives for the sake of enforcing a religious work ethos Should an employee or service provider be allowed, on religious grounds, to refuse to work with customers of the opposite sex or of a same-sex sexual orientation This book explores how judges decide these issues and defends a democratic approach, which is conducive to a more democratic understanding of our vivre ensemble. The normative democratic approach proposed in this book is grounded on a sociological and historical analysis of two national stories of the relationships between law, religion, diversity and the State, the British (mainly English) and the French stories. The book then puts the democratic paradigm to the test, by looking at cases involving clashes between religious freedoms and competing rights in the workplace. Contrary to the current alternative between the accommodationist view, which defers to religious requests, and the analogous view, which undermines the importance of religious freedom for pluralism, this book offers a third way. It fills a gap in the literature on the relationships between law and religious freedoms and provides guidelines for judges confronted with difficult cases.

Reviews

[The book] is of great importance and social and political relevance The book is pleasant to read, the author's style is clear and the book is very well organized The thoughts provoked by the book and the theses contained therein testify to the pleasure of reading it as well as the inability to account, at least completely, for the richness of the analysis it contains. * Revue critique de droit international priv (Bloomsbury translation) *
In a context in which the fear of Islam is increasingly compromising the legitimacy of the manifestation of religious identities in the public space and the sphere of work, the undertaking is as bold as it is welcome Very clear and reasoned, the book is pleasant to read. -- Claire de Galembert, cole normale suprieure Paris-Saclay * Droit & Socit (Bloomsbury translation) *

Author Bio

Myriam Hunter-Henin is Reader in Law and Religion and Comparative Law at University College London.