Freedom of Conscience. A Comparative Law Perspective addresses the timeliest of topics. Across the European continent as well as in the Anglophone world (including the United States), “freedom of conscience” is at the forefront of issues addressed by judges and legislators. It is also a perennial matter of great importance. Public authorities throughout the ages have struggled to understand, and properly to meld, the necessities of political order and the freedom of competent adults to author their own actions and to constitute themselves by making, and acting upon, their conscientious decisions about what moral truth requires of them. The urgency and gravity of the issues presented by “freedom of conscience” is also matched by their intrinsic complexity. For all these reasons, only a multi-disciplinary, full-orbed approach to these questions will do them justice. This volume rises to the occasion. The comparative perspective supplied by the editor’s recruitment of an international group of scholars, and also by his assignment to some of them the task of investigating additional countries, is utterly invaluable. The papers deftly blend what I might call “lawyer’s law” – that is, a careful presentation of the facts and holdings of courts or the precise details of a particular statutory scheme – with genuine philosophical depth. I should like to emphasize this virtue of the collection by observing that collections of this general sort tend to be either all sail or all anchor, either drowned in the minutiae of law without a care for the big picture, or all philosophy untethered to the reality of the positive law. Blicharz’s book has broken this mold. It promises to appeal to working lawyers, students, judges, and scholars. Gerard V. Bradley, Professor of Law, University of Notre Dame, USA This edited volume will be a useful resource to scholars in this area. It has a rich national variety, covering Poland (extensively), Italy, the United States, the United Kingdom, and three Scandinavian countries (Sweden, Norway, and Finland). Anyone interested in the state of the freedom of conscience in notable Western democracies will benefit from this work. Those particularly interested in Poland, a country not always focused on in the literature, will find this book of great value. And that is the hallmark of scholarship – a conversation in the search for truth. James C. Phillips, PhD, Stanford University’s Constitutional Law Center, USA

Freedom of Religion. A Comparative Law Perspective consists of five chapters, looking at freedom of religion, particularly the display of religious symbols, in Poland, Italy, Hungary, and the United States. It provides a concise and very insightful look into the legal regimes of four nations, allowing reader to get a solid comparative view of public religious displays in these countries. Each chapter has sufficient depth and overall this edited volume will be a useful resource to scholars and jurists in this area. Dr. James C. Phillips, Stanford University’s Constitutional Law Center The presented volume leads to an in-depth reflection on the issue of the display of religious symbols in the public sphere, which is widely discussed today. Most of the articles prove that secularism of the contemporary state ruled by law targets Christian symbolism (cross, cradle, the Decalogue). Christian religious symbols shall always be inscribed in the temporal order, otherwise they have no chance to be displayed in the public sphere. In this way, the rights of Catholic believers, as one of the dominant religious groups, are restricted in the name of the protection of religious and areligious minorities. As a result, the aim is to bring about the actual equality of all religions and – ultimately – the final removal of the Christian tradition from Western culture. Against this background, Polish (as well as Hungarian and Italian) judicial decisions present a different approach, which – as the authors of the volume prove – presents a position in favour of the presence of religious symbolism in the public sphere. The multifaceted evaluation of the inconsistency, casuistry and nuance of the jurisprudence of the US Supreme Court is extremely creative and interesting. It allows to conclude that the jurisprudence of the US Supreme Court, which usually limits the presence of religious symbols in the public forum, has not yet become universally binding. The pluralism of philosophical and religious attitudes still constitutes the axiological core of American democracy. Prof. dr hab. Andrzej Dziadzio, Jagiellonian University in Kraków

Freedom of Speech: A Comparative Law Perspective offers a wide-ranging review of free speech law in Europe, the U.S., Canada and Australia, with a special focus on hate speech and on artistic and scientific speech. It provides a great deal of information on these topics, in a single volume, which presents a considerable value to anyone who wants to study the subject. prof. Christopher Wolfe, University of Dallas The book is disturbing. It encourages to pose serious questions, in particular about the phenomenon of the persecution for expressing traditional views, which ceased to be accepted by certain political and intellectual elites. It presents the context which allows us to realize how difficult it is to address such issues. Nevertheless, searching for the answers seems absolutely necessary. The analyses of the US law could be considered a universal parable about the awareness of free speech. The analyses of the law in other countries warn us how fragile the protection of freedom of expression is. prof. Franciszek Longchamps de Bérier, Jagiellonian University in Kraków The volume focuses on an important and complex theoretical question of practical value which is inscribed in the debate on the limits of freedom of speech. It is a collection of independent studies with a clearly presented central idea. Written by the authors representing not only different academic institutions and countries but even different legal cultures. Such a choice of authors offers a variety of presented evaluations, which testifies to the richness of content included in the book and is an invitation to further studies and analyses. prof. Wojciech Lis, John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin

This publication is a compilation of studies on religious instruction in state schools. As Europe goes through a "social revolution" with the influence of the church and religious instruction in state schools being opened to discussion, this book describes the diversity between states and analyzes the legislative basis of religious instruction in various countries. The comparative analyses will be of value to researchers in educational research and to educational policymakers.

This book examines the interpretation and application of the right to freedom of religion and belief of new minorities formed by recent migration by the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) and the United Nations Human Rights Committee (HRC). New minorities are increasingly confronted with restrictions of their religious practices and have addressed their rights claims both to the ECtHR and the HRC through their individual complaint procedures, which resulted in several contradicting decisions. Based on a quantitative and qualitative empirical analysis of the relevant case law, focusing in particular on the reasoning adopted by the two bodies, this book finds that the HRC in its practice offers a significantly higher level of protection to new minorities than the ECtHR. Such divergence may be explained by various institutional and conceptual differences, of which the concept of the margin of appreciation is the most influential. It is contended that the extensive use of the concept of the margin of appreciation by the ECtHR in the case law regarding new minorities’ right to freedom of religion and belief, and the absence of such concept in the HRC’s case law, could be explained by different understandings of the role of an international human rights body in conflicts between the majority and minorities. This book argues that such divergence could be mitigated with various tools, such as the inclusion of cross-references to the case law of other relevant bodies as well as to instruments specifically established for the protection of minorities. The book will be of interest to academics, researchers and practitioners in the area of international human rights law, international public law in general and law and religion.

This book examines the right to conscientious objection in international human rights law. It begins with an exploration of the concept of conscience and its evolution. Ozgur Heval o inar analyzes human rights law at both the international and regional level, considering UN, European, and inter-American mechanisms.

In this `Dickensian century' of human rights, the world has cultivated the best of religious rights protections, but witnessed the worst of religious rights abuses. In this volume, Jimmy Carter, John T. Noonan, Jr., and a score of leading jurists assess critically and comparatively the religious rights laws and practices of the international community and of selected states in the Atlantic continents. This volume and its companion Religious Human Rights in Global Perspective: Religious Perspectives are products of an ongoing project on religion, human rights and democracy undertaken by the Law and Religion Program at Emory University.

This book analyses the right to religious freedom in international law, drawing on an array of national and international cases. Taking a rigorous approach to the right to religious freedom, Anat Scolnicov argues that the interpretation and application of religious freedom must be understood as a conflict between individual and group claims of rights, and that although some states, based on their respective histories, religions, and cultures, protect the group over the individual, only an individualistic approach of international law is a coherent way of protecting religious freedom. Analysing legal structures in a variety of both Western and Non-Western jurisdictions, the book sets out a topography of different constitutional structures of religions within states and evaluates their compliance with international human rights law. The book also considers the position of women's religious freedom vis-à-vis community claims of religious freedom, of children’s right to religious freedom and of the rights of dissenters within religious groups.

This volume deals with the basic human rights of aliens from the perspective of international and comparative law. It examines the rules regarding treatment of aliens and the extent to which these rules have been adopted in the domestic legislation of more than 40 different states. It aims to achieve two basic goals: 1) to define the status of aliens under international law, that is, which rights are granted to every person by international instruments; and 2) to establish whether this set of rules has been adopted by the domestic legislation of the states under review. The author classifies the basic human rights of aliens into seven different categories, namely: 1) fundamental rights; 2) private rights; 3) social and cultural rights; 4) economic rights; 5) political rights; 6) public rights; and 7) procedural rights. For each of these categories she reviews opinions of international legal commentators, decisions of international and regional tribunals, as well as national legislation, domestic court decisions, and opinions of local authorities.