Susanna Mancini

The Crucifix Rage: Supranational Constitutionalism Bumps Against the Counter-Majoritarian Difficulty

On November 3rd 2009, in Lautsi v. Italy, the European Court of Human Rights held that the mandatory display of the crucifix in Italian public school classrooms restricts the right of parents to educate their children in conformity with their convictions, and the right of children to believe or not to believe. This essay situates the crucifix case in the frame of Italian legal, political and cultural, context, with reference to similar cases decided in other Western jurisdictions. It then highlights the novelty of the Lautsi case and emphasizes its potentially positive implications in strengthening the counter-majoritarian role of the ECtHR, while at the same time remaining mindful of its possible negative consequences. If, as it seems likely, the Italian institutions and the Italian people will resist the European judgment, this could in fact set the premises for a weakening of the judicial authority of Court.

Global Religion in a Post-Westphalia World

In this chapter, I address how globalization, de-privatization, mass-scale migration and the rise of supranational constitutional organisms squarely challenge the premises of the Westphalian model of coordination of religion and political boundaries. I start with an account of how the resurgence of strong religion impacts the interplay between faith and reason in a liberal polity. Next, I show how globalization has provided a fertile terrain for transnational religious actors to regain a crucial role in the international arena, and to influence domestic and international law-making and litigation in the sphere of religious freedom and sexual and reproductive rights. Finally, I focus on how the resurgence of religion in the political sphere affects the traditional Western models of protecting religious freedom, and I provide an overview of the post-Westaphalian models of managing the relationship between religion and the state, focusing in particular on the role of religion in the culturalization of citizenship.

Sotto il velo della tolleranza. Un confronto tra il trattamento dei simboli religiosi di maggioranza e di minoranza nella sfera pubblica

The essay focuses on key current questions through a comparative analysis of the treatment of displays of religious symbols in public places. These questions include: whether, assuming commitment to pluralism, multiculturalism and religious and non-religious comprehensive views, there may be ways to improve on existing models or to replace them with better-suited ones given the new religious and political realities; and whether tolerance can be redeployed to boost pluralism while avoiding irreconcilable conflicts between religious fundamentalism and secularism. The place of religious symbols in public spaces provides a particularly good case study in as much as conflicts over such symbols constitute a direct challenge to the legitimacy of the dominant conception of constitutionalism as inextricably linked to secularism. In a pluralistic society, religious symbols play a key role in identity-related dynamics. Moreover, globalization, large-scale migration and the aftermath of September 11, 2001 have dramatically increased the quest for social cohesion and strong collective identities. Religious symbols figure prominently in this quest because they evoke absolute, and therefore reassuring, truths, although they can easily turn into catalyzers of aggression, to the extent that they generate blind fixations and unquestioned adherences. Majorities and minorities seek shelter in religious symbols, as a reflex against the increasing difficulty they experience in finding a common core of shared civic values. A comparative analysis of the reactions of courts and legislators confronted with such conflicts reveals a tendency to counter or minimize pluralism, rather than to seek a reasonable accommodation of the different religions within the polity.