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The Law and Religion course will prompt you to reflect about the role of the State in a democracy, the interactions between community, individual and national identity and more generally, the role of the law in fostering tolerant societies.

The module will explore recent legal controversies surrounding religion and will touch on a wide variety of areas: constitutional law, employment law, human rights, discrimination, family law, education, to name but a few. It will examine conceptual concerns such as the acceptability of imposing majority values in our multicultural societies, the problem of balancing conflicting individual fundamental rights, the role of courts in drawing the limits between acceptable and unacceptable illiberal claims. The teaching method will however be inductive as we will start with practical problems, drawing theoretical debates from the case at hand. The course should appeal to anyone interested in how law can solve practical controversies. A propensity to think outside the boundaries of a given discipline is recommended as a cross-disciplinary and comparative approach will be adopted.

Readings and structure

There will not be a particular textbook recommended for the course, but relevant material will be indicated prior to each of the 10 two-hour (interactive) lectures and discussed further in the three tutorials. 

Full module information is available in the ¹û¶³Ó°Ôº Module Catalogue.

Eligibility: The module welcomes affiliate students or students from other ¹û¶³Ó°Ôº departments and UoL institutions. Students from other ¹û¶³Ó°Ôº departments and UoL institutions must be in their final year of study.

Students outside of the ¹û¶³Ó°Ôº Faculty of Laws should consult the registration instructions on our website.