The Indian Constitution guarantees that individuals have the freedom to choose their partners free from state interference. However, the Uttar Pradesh Vidhi Virudh Dharma Samparivartan Pratishedh Adhyadesh, 2020 (Uttar Pradesh Prohibition of Unlawful Religious Conversion Law, 2020) prohibits religious conversion to the extent that it assumes all conversions are illegal, which may have a negative impact on interfaith marriages involving consenting adults. The author argues that the provisions of the Uttar Pradesh Ordinance forbidding religious conversion are vague and inadequate for addressing forceful or unlawful conversion for marriages, do not demonstrate any reasonable relation to the object of the legislation, and are constitutionally repugnant. The author concludes that by conferring police powers on state agencies to intervene in interfaith marriages, the Uttar Pradesh Ordinance erodes citizens’ freedom to choose a partner and their individual autonomy, privacy, and personal liberty—rights that are enshrined under India’s constitution.

Over recent decades, several global tech giants have gained enormous power while at the same time generating various disputes with their end-users, local governments, and regulators. We propose that the Jewish concept of covenant can help the above parties, legal scholars, and wider society in addressing this complex legal reality. We present the challenge of disequilibrium between the above four parties against the main points of conflict: the requirement of customer consent; clear contractual provisions upon entry; options for reasonable customer exit; limitations on the platform’s ability to exercise unilateral termination; profile-based discrimination; and liability for mere intermediation. We introduce the biblical concept of covenant, and we review its unfolding in Jewish tradition. Further, we conceptualize three main covenantal principles: (1) responsibility—God and humans are both conceived as moral agents; (2) reciprocity—God as a caring law giver, open to human appeals; and (3) reasonability—divine instruction as initially intelligible. We demonstrate how the latter principle of explainability is exercised in the biblical law narratives and how the story of Balaam stresses the significance of moral agency that cannot hide behind “mere intermediary” claims. In light of this analysis, we revisit the relationship between tech giants and tech users to demonstrate how covenantality offers novel ways to conceptualize the noted conflicts between the parties.

Although diverging influences have always characterized the relation between religion and democracy, in Italy, tensions arising from these divergences are especially exacerbated by the country’s current religious diversity and plurality, and they are magnified when combined with chronic emergencies such as immigration and international terrorism. These critical factors complicate the application of freedom of religion and the supreme principle of secularism (principio supremo di laicità), which are essential parts of the Italian legal system. This article analyzes these aspects of the law by considering the relation between Islamic communities and the state. In particular, the article focuses on both endogenous influences (Italy’s traditional system of state-church relationship) and exogenous influences (immigration and international terrorism). These factors muddle the interpretation of constitutional rights, including the right of Muslims and Islamic groups to be equal and equally free before the law.

Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde (1930–2019) was one of Germany’s foremost postwar legal scholars. He coined or popularized key terms and ideas that have left their mark on postwar German political debate to an extent matched by only few, from the chain of legitimation to the concept of the constitution as an ordering frame, the importance of the idea of subsidiarity in the European Union’s political competency, and his insistence that society must continuously work toward agreement on the things that cannot be voted on: the ultimate agreements in society that lie beyond the ballot box. Böckenförde was a lifelong commentator on Catholic affairs in Germany and involved in several important inner-Catholic reform initiatives. At the age of thirty-one, he became known to a wider German public with an article that presented a critical historical appraisal of the role of the Catholic Church under National Socialism. While still a postdoc, he co-authored a widely publicized critique of Jesuit Gustav Gundlach’s justification on theological grounds of a war of nuclear deterrence. In 1968, he was the first to publish a German edition of De Libertate Religiosa, the final declaration of the Second Vatican Council (Vatican II), and provided an authoritative commentary.

According to Böckenförde’s interpretation in his famous essay “The Rise of the State as a Process of Secularization” (1967), in the formation of modern statehood religious freedom and, more generally, freedom of conscience played a central role. It was “for love of such freedom” that the modern state set inviolable limits on the exercise of its own coercive force vis-à-vis citizens relying on its protection. Nobody may be forced through the coercive tools of political power to hold true something that they do not believe. This dynamic of freedom is further taken up in Böckenförde’s analysis of church history and theological traditions, as this essay demonstrates. The conception of religious freedom as a right of the human person, contained in the Second Vatican Council declaration Dignitatis Humanae, is a real “Copernican turn.” It represents a true revolution in Catholic interpretation of democracy, public ethos, and natural law, which aims at reconciling modern freedom, democracy, and religion through a revised doctrine of the common good.

In comparing the works of two major Catholic thinkers, John Courtney Murray (1904–1967) and Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde (1930–2019), one finds an example of the divergences between European-continental Catholic and US Catholic concepts of the state and society. This divergence has become more evident in the context of the rise of American Catholics in politics and in the context of the crisis of the post–World War II liberal political order, but they have been at the heart of different Catholic intellectual traditions for quite some time. A comparative analysis of Murray and Böckenförde helps to explain the role of US Catholicism in the crisis of American democracy and the complexity of the reception of Vatican II in political theology in different Catholic Churches around the world.

In 1995, the German legislature introduced the rule that a woman who terminates her pregnancy in the first trimester, which is illegal, would not be punished if she had previously undergone a legally prescribed counseling session. The counseling session, while oriented toward the protection of unborn life, is also open-ended, respectful of the decision-making right and duty of the pregnant woman. At the request of the pope, the German bishops instructed the existing counseling centers of the Catholic welfare organizations not to issue any written certificates of such counseling, as such certificates could ultimately be used to evade punishment. In order to continue to be able to offer counseling, Catholics, among them Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde, founded the association Donum Vitae (Gift of Life), which continues to issue certificates when requested. For the German bishops, the association, founded by Catholics for Catholics and non-Catholics alike, is external to the church. But what precisely is Donum Vitae? What does it stand for? Why are assessments of the association divided until this day? The essay examines these questions theologically and legally.

In the essay “A Christian in the Office of Constitutional Judge,” Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde addresses the dilemma of the Catholic judge who is sworn to apply a secular constitution yet who confesses to a “spirituality [that] knows no separation between the personal-private and the occupational spheres.” Böckenförde faced that dilemma in the 1993 abortion decision of the German Constitutional Court, which—with Böckenförde voting with the majority—held that abortion, while still punishable, allowed exceptions subject to certain conditions and counselling requirements. In this essay, the author situates that issue within the nature of judicial power and the ethical duties of the judge; the jurisdictional constraints that in other jurisdictions are available to avoid normative conflicts; and, finally, the challenges to judicial power when called upon to validate laws that go beyond the traditional punitive approach that merely prohibits and condemns, and that instead use welfare measures to actualize substantive norms taking into account social and historical realities.

As a former diplomat currently engaged in praxis-oriented research and teaching, I examine Böckenförde’s importance in the broad context of the debate on the future of Europe. First, I trace some of Böckenförde’s specific thoughts on the development of the European Union, notably concerning trends that impact on the shared “sense of belonging” that underpins deliberative democracy. Second, accepting Böckenförde’s crucial distinction between the granular provisions of the law and an underlying ethos or sense of direction, I argue that the Böckenförde paradox is strongly supported at the roots of our culture by ancient Greek political thought, in ways that can help us develop our thinking in new directions—involving Aristotelian conceptions of orientation, community (koinōnia), and discernment. Finally, I address the challenges currently facing the European Union, taking as my point of departure President Emmanuel Macron’s evocation of the “contribution which a living Europe can bring to civilisation.” The political thought of Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde, illuminated by conceptions of orientation, community, and discernment, can help to prepare us for a future intercultural dialogue in the service of peace.

The history and influence of the School of Salamanca is attracting the attention of researchers from very different branches of knowledge and from a very wide variety of countries around the world. Broaching this subject invites one to reflect on both the unity of knowledge and the important role that theology plays in a secularized world. In this short essay, I discuss four recently published works that show the global scope of interest in Spanish Scholasticism in general and the School of Salamanca in particular. The first, The School of Salamanca: A Case of Global Knowledge, was edited by Thomas Duve, Jose Luis Egío, and Christiane Birr in coordination of the Max Planck Institute (2021). The second work, ¿Qué es la Escuela de Salamanca?, was edited by Simona Langella and Rafael Ramis-Barceló (2021). The third work is a recent thematic compendium on Spanish Scholasticism edited by Harald E. Braun, Erik De Bom, and Paolo Astorri (2022). Finally, I discuss David Lantigua’s monograph, Infidels and Empires in a New World Order: Early Modern Spanish Contributions to International Legal Thought (2020).