Programme

The course is designed to provide students with ability to understand the law of religions on a global scale. The lectures will explore the relationship between legal and religious experience across the spectrum of Confucian, Christian, Jewish, Islamic, and Hindu faiths, as well as indigenous beliefs, considering their diverse and multifaceted dimensions: local and global, institutional and cultural. Students will first be introduced to an analysis of the relationship between legitimacy, normative validity, meaning, and time within the various theological and normative frameworks that religious experience has produced throughout history and across different geographical regions. In addition to examining the legal and institutional structure of the so-called denominations, the course will also analyze the relationship between religious knowledge and the anthropological foundations of law. Based on the interpretive frameworks for understanding the intersection between law and religion proffered in the first part of the course, students will be asked to focus on the categories and mechanisms of social action through which religious law—depending on different political contexts—interact with state legal systems: from marriage to contracts, from the prerequisites of constitutional legitimacy to the realm of economic relations. This second part of the course aims to provide students with a cognitive framework to help them navigate legal situations in which religious factors, in various parts of the world, may take on legal significance and influence the resolution of issues that legal scholars and practitioners may encounter in their work both within and beyond national borders. To this end, judicial and practical cases will be presented and analyzed.

Core Documentation

1. Hahn, J. 2022. Foundations of a Sociology of Canon Law. Cham: Springer:
Chaps. 3, 4, 5, 6.

2. Berkmann, B. 2020. The Internal Law of Religions: Introduction to a Comparative Discipline:
Chaps. 2, 3, 4.

Both of the texts listed above are required reading for the exam.

Type of evaluation

Students' knowledge and understanding will be assessed through at least two oral exam questions covering: 1. The structure and the dynamics of global religious law and its epistemological foundations with particular reference to the profiles of connections with secular legal systems. 2. The ability to articulate a theoretical-constructive understanding of the experience of global religious law and to analyze practical cases in view of the anthropological presupposition of legal religious and secular legal orders. The ability to communicate will be judged according to the performance of the activities described above and its quality. 3. Learning skills will be assessed on the basis of the attitude shown by the student to use in a dynamic and creative way the concepts learned during the course and through the study of the texts. 4. The exams take place in presence except in the cases in which the university regulation allows for the remote examination. 5. It will be possible to take mid-term tests. The evaluation criteria will be the same as those applied for the final tests.