Bologna, June 22, 2022
ORFECT will manage a panel within the Fifth Annual Conference of the European Academy of Religion, which will take place in Bologna, June 20-23, 2022. FSCIRE (Fondazione per le scienze religiose) will be the organising institution.
The overarching topic of the Conference will be Religion and Diversity.
The panel managed by ORFECT will take place on WEDNESDAY, JUNE 22, PLESSO BELMELORO, AULA M, 8:30 – 12:00. It is titled: The role of the State as a neutral and impartial organizer of the exercise of religious diversity: suggestions from the European Court of Human Rights and patterns among the States of the Council of Europe.
The case Law of the ECtHR underlines the role of the State “as a neutral and impartial organizer of the exercise of various religions, faiths and beliefs” called to ensure “peace and religious tolerance in a democratic society”. In this perspective, the public intervention in order to guarantee religious diversity will be permitted only when it moves into the stream of neutrality and impartiality. This duty of neutrality and impartiality of the State is incompatible with any power of evaluation by the latter as to the legitimacy of religious beliefs or the modalities of expression of these, and requires guaranteeing pluralism and an authentic “horizontal tolerance” between groups and individuals carrying different worldviews. At the same time, ECtHR case law has pointed out that pluralism, tolerance and a spirit of openness are necessary elements in order to consider a society “democratic”. In this perspective, religious diversity must be granted on the basis of dialogue and a spirit of compromise, which necessarily imply different concessions on the part of individuals which are justified for the purpose of safeguarding and promoting the ideals and values of a democratic society. Aim of this panel is to debate on these points outlined by the Strasbourg Court and then move towards different experiences of managing religious diversity in some different legal systems of the Council of Europe ; Italy, Poland, Greece, Spain, Hungary, Sweden and Turkey.
Chair : Javier Martinez-Torron (Universidad Complutense de Madrid)
Speakers
Vincenzo Pacillo (Università di Modena e Reggio Emilia),
The role of the State as a neutral and impartial organizer of the exercise of religious diversity: suggestions from the European Court of Human Rights
Wojciech Brzozowski (University of Warsaw), Lessons learnt, lessons lost: managing religious diversity in Poland
Silvia Angeletti (Università di Perugia), The (uneasy) legal management of religious diversity in Italy
Giulia Kakavas (Università di Modena e Reggio Emilia), Managing religious diversity in Greece: the case of Mount Athos
María José Valero Estarellas (Universidad Villanueva), Managing Religious Diversity in Spain: an ongoing challenge for equality and cooperation
Szilvia Köbel (Károli Gáspár University of the Reformed Church in Hungary), “The protection of Christian culture shall be the obligation of the State”. The 7th (2018) and 8th (2020) amendments of the Fundamental Law of Hungary
Giuseppina Scala (Università Bocconi), The Role of the European Convention on Human Rights in the travaux préparatoires of the forthcoming law on Swedish Religious Communities
Matteo Corsalini (Università di Padova), Pick your God and play in Strasbourg. The effects of ECtHR rulings on the management of religious diversity in Turkey
Leicester, July 20, 2022
ORFECT promotes and supports the Roundtable DISPUTE RESOLUTION AND RELIGION: A ROUNDTABLE, which will take place on 20 July 2022, Leicester Law School.
The role of religion in dispute resolution is particularly controversial. In addition to the specific mechanisms for resolving disputes based directly on religious questions established within the various confessional institutions, religious issues also emerge significantly in disputes arising out of private, public, criminal and international legal matters. The relevance and influence of religion in such disputes, however, is rarely the subject of study and research: religion is often considered as an aspect merely inherent in the personal sphere of the parties, and its relevance reduced to issues subject to reasonable accommodation.
The practice, however, shows how questions of identity – among which religion is often chief – are increasingly assuming a significant and influential role in disputes in which, for various reasons, problems of a spiritual nature directly affect matters regulated by law. The aim of the roundtable is thus to explore the role of religion in the solution of international disputes.
The call for papers is available here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1WUQ0djvuDtRa1bPz1UbcCJE_lSo3N2GT/view?usp=sharing
Cordoba, September 20, 2022
ORFECT will manage a panel within the 6th ICLARS Conference will be held in Cordoba (Spain), from 19 to 21 September 2022. The general theme of the conference is: Human Dignity, Law, and Religious Diversity: Designing the Future of Inter-Cultural Societies. The ICLARS (International Consortium for Law and Religion Studies) is an international organization with base in Milan, Italy (http://www.iclars.org/). It was founded in 2007 and counts already more than four hundred members of the five continents, most of them renowned scholars and intellectuals linked to universities; there are also members coming from governmental institutions, legislatures, the judiciary and the media. The ICLARS is an independent and ideologically neutral institution, whose aim is to study the legal, social, political, and cultural implications of freedom of religion from a plural perspective. In its ten years of existence it has become a forum of reference and a source of initiatives at the international level.
The panel managed by ORFECT will take place on September 20, 5 pm. Its title is The main issues concerning religions freedom in the 2020-2021 jurisprudence of the European
Court of Human Rights
Speakers:
Vincenzo Pacillo
Paolo Vargiu
Silvia Angeletti
Giuseppina Scala
Ehlimana Memisevic
Wojciech Brzozowski
Matteo Corsalini