COMPARATIVE LAW AND RELIGION (INTL7632)
3 credits. Lecture.

This course deals with the relationship between church and state in several different countries, using the law in the United States of America as a basis of comparison. Since 1947, when the Supreme Court of the United States decided the issue whether Ewing Township could provide transportation to and from school for parochial school children (Everson v. Bd. of Ed., 330 U.S. 15), America has debated the role of religion in American public life. At its heart, the issue has become in fact whether religion should play a role at all in American public life or be restricted to the private life of the individual person, as some countries do. Such a view would prevent people from expressing religious allegiance in public (for example, wearing religious symbols such as yarmulkes, crosses, turbans or Muslim head dress) or from inserting religion into the sphere of politics. The status of religion in American constitutional law, the debate about religious heritage in discussions of the draft of the Constitution of the Unione Europeo (EU) and the current status of secularization as well as theoretical conceptions of the place of religion in pluralistic societies will be treated, including several European and Latin American views.