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Overcoming essentialisation: a comparative study of ‘living-together’ conceptions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 May 2017

Emma Patrignani Open the ORCID record for Emma Patrignani [Opens in a new window]
Emma Patrignani*
Affiliation:
PhD Candidate, Faculty of Law, University of Lapland E-mail: [email protected].
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[email protected].
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Abstract

This paper compares two judgments of constitutional courts (French and German) assessing the constitutionality of statutes concerning veil-wearing and focuses on the underlying conceptions of ‘living together’. This means that what is actually compared is the self-understanding of the respective majority in the two societies as stated in the decisions. This is done by disassembling the concept of ‘living together’ into three elements: the notion of the individual, the meaning of belonging to the national community and the space accorded to religion in public. Each section of this paper examines one of these elements as they are entailed in the judgments and positions them critically within the respective legal cultural and historical contexts. The main aim of this paper is methodological in nature and is namely to show how comparative legal cultural studies can avoid essentialisation and rather highlight the complexity of every cultural context.

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Article
Information
International Journal of Law in Context , Volume 14 , Issue 3 , September 2018 , pp. 374 - 395
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2017 

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