The freedom of the individual can easily come into conflict with his or her obligation to integrate in society. The case of Belcacemi and Oussar v Belgium provides a good example. It is evident that some restrictions of citizens’ freedoms must be accepted for a state to function and, more basically, persist; as a consequence, it is acceptable that certain demands, incorporated in criminal law, are made of citizens. The issue of the extent to which such restrictions are justified has increasingly become a topic of discussion. The present case raises a number of important questions with respect to the right to wear a full-face veil in public if the societal norm is that the face should be visible, the most salient of which are whether women should be ‘protected’ from unequal treatment against their will and to what extent society may impose values on the individual. I will argue that Belgian law places unwarranted restrictions on citizens and that the values behind it testify to an outlook that is difficult to reconcile with the freedom of conscience and religion.

The use of credentials in an ecclesiastical context is a means of assuring that a minister is who he or she claims to be and is therefore trained and qualified to exercise ministry within a particular church tradition as determined by individual denominations. The concept and use of credentials has developed over time. Using primary sources in the main, this article examines the use of credentials as a tool for ‘inclusion’ or a means of ‘exclusion’, or both, in the history of the largest Presbyterian church in Southern Africa and its predecessors. The research question under study is to what degree, if any, were credentials used to control ministers and to cleanse and purify the church of radical – such as anti-apartheid – elements?

The Law Commission has consulted on provisional proposals for reform of the law governing how and where couples can get married in England and Wales. This article gives an overview of those proposals, with particular focus on religious weddings, including Anglican weddings. It examines proposed changes to each aspect of the process of getting married, from the preliminaries to the people required to officiate at the wedding, the permitted locations and the rules governing the content of the ceremony. The article argues that the legal status of marriage itself is highly flexible, recognising a range of unions. The proposed reforms aim to reflect the diverse range of views about the meaning of marriage, and ensure that the way in which the law recognises a legally binding wedding fits with the many different traditions according to which religious groups celebrate the formation of marriage.

John Witte Jr is a law and religion scholar of the first order. For decades, as the director of the Emory Center for the Study of Law and Religion at Atlanta, he has played a leading part in the development of the field of law and religion globally. He has written prolifically across a wide range of law and religion subjects. He has nurtured and guided a generation of vibrant scholars who will shape the field for decades to come. He has brought important new insights to law and religion that have animated critical and original law and religion thinking. This article introduces aspects of his work. It examines the personal interest of Witte in law and religion, and the influences on his approach to the field, particularly his Christian upbringing and convictions. It explores his rich and robust understanding of law and religion, around notions of the dialectical interaction between the two, the religiosity of secular law, and the juridical character of religion. It also studies Witte as a historian of law and religion – his quest to retrieve, reconstruct and re-engage historical aspects of law and religion so as to address challenges of today, interdisciplinary, international and inter-religious. In all this, Witte provides a work ethic for Christian scholars in this field in terms of stewardship, accessibility and engagement.

The title of this article is deliberately provocative: what meaning can be attached to a concept which lacks all the classic jurisprudential marks of authority, by those who concern themselves with the legal aspects of Anglican churches? Conversely, what lessons can be learned by them from the very persistence of such a concept over so very many years?

This article analyses recent trends in the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights concerned with the right to freedom of thought, belief and religion (Article 9, European Convention on Human Rights) and the right of parents to respect by the state for their religious and philosophical views in the education of their children (Article 2, Protocol 1).1 These developments include notable decisions concerned with protection from religious persecution in Georgia, with religious education in Norway and Turkey and with the display of crucifixes in state schools in Italy. It is apparent that the European Convention religious liberty jurisprudence increasingly stresses the role of the state as a neutral protector of religious freedom. For individuals religious freedom is now also recognised to include not only the right to manifest their religious belief but also freedom from having to declare their religious affiliation. As the religious liberty jurisprudence comes of age, other significant developments, for example in relation to conscientious objection to military service, can be anticipated.

The public religion of the Isle of Man is protestant Christianity in the liturgical tradition of the English Prayer Book. The religious establishment is headed by a bishop, who has been since 1541 subject to the oversight of the Archbishop of York.

Schedule 1 to the Juries Act 1974 provides that ‘[a] man in holy orders; a regular minister of any religious denomination [and] [a] vowed member of any religious order living in a monastery, convent or other religious community’ is ineligible to serve on a criminal (and also a civil) jury. This has been the law since 1972. For the remainder of this century members of the clergy have been eligible, but not compellable, jurors. In practice they did not serve. The change effected in 1972 is a reversion to the position which probably prevailed in the Middle Ages. Aside from the occasional official report, the liability of religious functionaries to serve on juries in criminal trials has been rarely written about. The last time it happened was in 1882. The object of this article is to fill the lacuna by tracing the history of the clergy's ineligibility for jury service in criminal trials and the reasons for it.

It is now generally recognised that as a matter of history the canon law was applied, subject to variations by local custom, in pre-Reformation England just as much as throughout the rest of Western Christendom. Indeed such local variations were permitted by the canon law itself. As Professor Brooke concluded in The English Church and The Papacy From The Conquest To The Reign of King John:

“The English Church recognised the same law as the rest of the Church; it possessed and used the same collections of Church law that were employed in the rest of the Church. There is no shred of evidence to show that the English Church in the eleventh and twelfth centuries was governed by laws selected by itself.”

The same was also true until the Reformation.

The House of Commons starts each day with Prayers given by the Speaker's Chaplain, beginning with Psalm 67:

In this article we discuss the recent history of the failed draft Bishops and Priests (Consecration and Ordination of Women) Measure, situating this within the broader context of the ordination of women and debates around the Equality Act exceptions for an organised religion. We aim to provide an account of the ways in which equality rights have been implemented in the relevant law; how the Church of England is responding to these rights; and how broader society understands the importance of gender equality and reacts to Synod's rejection of the draft Measure. We analyse these with reference to theories of heteronormativity and scholarship of human rights. In doing so, we aim to explain what is happening in the Church of England and broader society, and draw some conclusions about the current opportunities open to the Church and the state in matters of rights and equality.1