RESTORING FREEDOM OF CONSCIENCE

2015 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 176-193 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rafael Domingo
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Political Community ◽  
Freedom Of Religion ◽  
Protestant Reformation ◽  
The Political ◽  
Legal Systems ◽  
Multicultural Society ◽  
Freedom Of Conscience ◽  
Freedom Of Thought ◽  
Political Communities

AbstractThis paper argues that secular legal systems need a better defined space for freedom of conscience because this important right has been crowded out by both freedom of religion and freedom of thought. Based on the principles of the Protestant Reformation, American constitutionalism expanded the idea of freedom of conscience to the point of making it almost interchangeable with freedom of religion. On the other hand, international law, followed by European constitutional law, reduced the political force of the concept of freedom of conscience by assimilating it to freedom of thought. And yet freedom of conscience cannot be treated just the same as either religious freedom or freedom of thought. By nature, the secular legal systems of political communities are moral, but nonreligious. So morality and religion affect legal systems in different ways. For this reason, freedom of conscience and freedom of religion should be protected using different legal devices. The so-called privilege of abstaining (beneficium abstinendi) best protects freedom of conscience; freedom of religion, by contrast, is appropriately protected by what I call the religious exception (exceptio religiosa). The consequences of applying these legal tools in particular cases, and their proper scopes, depend on the constitutional model of the political community in question. But in general, an increasingly globalized, diverse, and multicultural society demands a wider application of both these legal tools.

The centrality of politeia for Aristotle’s Politics: Aristotle’s continuing significance for social and political science

2014 ◽  
Vol 53 (1) ◽  
pp. 139-159 ◽  
Author(s):  
Clifford Angell Bates
Keyword(s):  
Political Science ◽  
Comparative Politics ◽  
Homo Sapiens ◽  
Political Community ◽  
Political Life ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Systems ◽  
Global Concern ◽  
Political Communities ◽  
Regime Analysis

Political theorists today are addressing issues of global concern confronting state systems and in so doing are often forced to confront the concept of Homo sapiens as a ‘political animal’. Thus theorists considering Aristotle’s Politics attempt to transcend his polis-centric focus and make the case that Aristotle offers ways to address these global concerns by focusing on Empire. This article, contra Dietz et al., argues that Aristotle’s political science is first and foremost a science of politeia and that this approach to the operation and working of political systems is far superior to recent attempts at regime analysis in comparative politics. Thus Aristotle’s mode of examining political systems offers much fruit for those interested in approaching political phenomena with precision and depth as diverse manifestations of the political communities formed by the species Aristotle called the ‘political animal’. From this perspective, focusing on the politeia constituting each political community permits an analysis of contemporary transformations of political life without distorting what is being analyzed.

scholarly journals The integration and citizenship in a multicultural society

2018 ◽  
Vol 225 (3) ◽  
pp. 105-122
Author(s):  
Dr. Awatif Ali Khreisan
Keyword(s):  
Political System ◽  
The State ◽  
The Political ◽  
Legal Systems ◽  
Multicultural Society ◽  
Peaceful Coexistence ◽  
Living Together

There is no a communitydeprived from multiculturalism of religious, ethnics and linguistic. The freedom of the citizen is linked to cultural edification, in turns, the availability of opportunities for peaceful coexistence and acceptance of others. In order to,transfer the individuals and groups from the state of clash and struggle into a state of living together. It is a form of access to the political and legal systems to make these rights a real, through the availability of integration processes at the beginning is the building of  Citizenship which is theonly relationship that achieve integration over social, religious and cultural divisions for the establishment civil stateof a stable political system.

Just Hierarchy between Citizens

2020 ◽  
pp. 66-105
Author(s):  
Daniel A. Bell ◽  
Wang Pei
Keyword(s):  
Soft Power ◽  
Political System ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Political Community ◽  
The Political ◽  
Public Officials ◽  
Willingness To Serve ◽  
Political Communities ◽  
Political Meritocracy ◽  
China Today

This chapter turns to just hierarchies between citizens—mainly strangers to one another—in modern large-scale political communities. It argues that hierarchies between rulers and ruled in such communities are justified if the political system selects and promotes public officials with above-average ability and a willingness to serve the political community over and above their own private and family interests. The chapter demonstrates that this kind of ideal—the “political meritocracy”—helped to inspire the imperial political system in China's past and Chinese political reformers in the early twentieth century, and may help to justify the political system in China today. However, the meritocratic system needs to be accompanied by democratic mechanisms short of competitive elections at the top that allow citizens to show that they trust their rulers and provide a measure of accountability at different levels of government. In the Chinese context, however, there is a large gap between the ideal and the reality. Thus, this chapter recommends that a judicious mixture of Confucian-style “soft power” combined with democratic openness, Maoist-style mass line, and Daoist-style skepticism about the whole political system can help to reinvigorate political meritocracy in China.

scholarly journals (Non)Religious Freedom: A Critical Perspective on the Contemporary Understanding of Freedom of Conscience and Religion

Politeja ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (2(71)) ◽  
pp. 183-202
Author(s):  
Rafał Prostak
Keyword(s):  
Political Discourse ◽  
Religious Freedom ◽  
Christian Theology ◽  
Freedom Of Religion ◽  
The Political ◽  
Freedom Of Conscience ◽  
Critical Perspective ◽  
Free Exercise ◽  
Human Value ◽  
Liberty Of Conscience

Nowadays, liberty of conscience as an inalienable right is a standard of demoliberal constitutionalism. It is an obvious component of a well-organized society and state. However, at the very beginning of its presence in the political discourse, it was more a product of Christian theology (the free conscience perceived as a gift of God) than a legal category; more an endowment of divinity than an intrinsic human value. In the contemporary, secularized world, our understanding of freedom of religion includes not only free exercise of religion but also freedom from religion. An increasing number of non-believers changes our expectations of the state that is obliged to protect the freedom of conscience of all citizens regardless of their beliefs. The goal of the article is to consider the difficulties faced by people with a theistic worldview in the reality of a state founded on the principle of ideological neutrality.

Citizenship and Paternalism*

2021 ◽  
pp. 9-27
Author(s):  
Luara Ferracioli
Keyword(s):  
Prima Facie ◽  
Political Community ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Political ◽  
Philosophical Literature ◽  
Political Communities ◽  
The Right

Do states have a right to exclude prospective immigrants as they see fit? According to statists, the answer is a qualified yes. For these authors, self-determining political communities have a prima facie right to exclude, which can be overridden by the claims of vulnerable individuals. However, there is a concern in the philosophical literature that statists have not yet developed a theory that can protect children born in the territory from being excluded from the political community. For if the self-determining political community has the right to decide who should form the self in the first place, then that right should count against both newcomers by immigration and newcomers by birth. Or so the concern goes. This chapter defends statism against this line of criticism and defends a new account of the value of citizenship for children.

Contiguity, constituencies, and the political representation of minorities

2020 ◽  
pp. 239965442097240
Author(s):  
Benjamin Forest ◽  
Mike Medeiros
Keyword(s):  
Political Representation ◽  
Political Community ◽  
The Political ◽  
Minority Representation ◽  
Democratic Deliberation ◽  
Clear Association ◽  
Per Se ◽  
Political Communities

Contiguity is commonly treated as an essential, albeit noncontroversial quality of electoral districts. In contrast, we argue that the virtues ascribed to contiguity – discouraging gerrymandering, facilitating democratic deliberation, and mirroring political communities – either have weak justifications in practice or do not have a clear association with contiguity per se. Moreover, contiguity can impose significant constraints on minority representation when minorities live in segregated, widely separated settlements. We use examples from Canada to demonstrate the effects of contiguity on minority representation by creating sets of non-contiguous constituencies that substantially increase the number of districts with minority majorities. More generally, we argue that scholars should pay more attention to how the conflation of contiguity and political community are woven into state practices.

Political Community, Legitimacy and Discrimination

1974 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 121-137 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. A. Laponce
Keyword(s):  
Social Groups ◽  
The State ◽  
Political Community ◽  
The Political ◽  
Legitimate Authority ◽  
Infancy And Childhood ◽  
The Family ◽  
Political Communities ◽  
The Continuum

Relating the notion of political community to those of discrimination and legitimacy — and, consequently, setting up a typology which will contrast communities by the criteria they use to distinguish members from non-members and by the location they give to legitimacy, placed either in a ruler or in a process — will be made easier if we consider first of all certain striking similarities which exist between the most private of social groups, the family, and the most public, the state, similarities which probably facilitate the transfer of the ideological constructs formed in infancy and childhood into the political expectancies and assumptions of adulthood. Let us distinguish communities defined through the brothers from communities defined through the father: communities centered around a leader from those centered on themselves. These contrasts will suggest to us a natural/ artificial continuum along which political communities can be ranked, those most resembling the family in their ideas about legitimate authority and legitimate membership being closer to the ‘natural’ end of the continuum. I will explain later the reasons for this distinction between ‘natural’ and ‘artificial’, but I must at the outset make it absolutely clear that the use of these terms does not in any way imply an evaluative preference on my part.

Citizenship and Ethics

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dianne Gereluk
Keyword(s):  
Social Context ◽  
Political Community ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
The Political ◽  
Ethical Challenges ◽  
Policy Documents ◽  
Social Division ◽  
Good Citizen ◽  
The Face ◽  
Political Communities

The dominant premise underlying contemporary educational theory and practice is that citizens are members of political communities who have inherent rights as part of that membership and concomitant responsibilities that inform their beliefs, commitments, capabilities, and actions as members of these same communities. How individuals govern themselves in relation to others within the political community is a primary aim of education in contemporary policy documents, aims, and objectives statements. Yet, despite the urgency and salience of students learning to live together in the face of social division and conflict, the framing of citizenship and ethics in schools varies at least as much as the different visions of what constitutes a good citizen in the first place. This lack of consensus is reflected in how and where citizenship is framed in schools, how it is considered in policy, and how it is interpreted and facilitated in classrooms. Various educational theorists have also conceptualized the notion of citizenship and its place in schools. The variety of perspectives on these questions underscores the difficulties that educators experience in navigating ethical challenges in an educational and social context, where citizenship has become a publicly contested issue.

scholarly journals Progressive Eras, Periods of Reaction, and Constitutional Change

2014 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 437-459 ◽  
Author(s):  
Danny Nicol
Keyword(s):  
Social Influence ◽  
Crucial Role ◽  
Political Community ◽  
The Political ◽  
Constitutional Change ◽  
General Phenomenon ◽  
Labour Government ◽  
Liberal Government ◽  
Political Communities ◽  
The Right

This article argues that “political herding” plays a crucial role in driving and shaping constitutional change. It links the prevalence of political herding to a psychological phenomenon, “social influence.” It goes on to argue that constitutional change is often driven by the desire for certain substantive policies, which in turn are determined by whether, in a particular epoch, the political community is herding in a progressive or reactionary direction. Contending that the general phenomenon whereby political communities go through recurrent swings to the left or to the right has been neglected by scholars, this essay aims to give this phenomenon the centrality it merits in relation to the evolution of the British constitution. Accordingly it considers the 1906 Liberal government, the 1945 Labour government and the lengthy succession of post-1979 neoliberal governments, analyzing how substantive progressive and reactionary programs led to constitutional change. Finally this article considers the legitimacy both of political herding itself, and of political herding's impact on constitutional change.

scholarly journals Ideological Freedom And Related Legal Wording

2020 ◽  
pp. 109-136
Author(s):  
Marc-Abraham Puig Hernández
Keyword(s):  
Religious Freedom ◽  
Legal Systems ◽  
Freedom Of Conscience ◽  
Freedom Of Thought

In practical discourse, we can find out legal wording that is associated with ideological freedom and applied interchangeably: freedom of thought, freedom of conscience and religious freedom. In this essay, our aim consists in determining which the proper use of each expression is. For this purpose, we have observed: how the concept of ideological freedom is established in some legal systems; how it can be differentiated from religious freedom clearly but not from freedom of conscience on account of a vague material scope of validity; and why these difficulties move from conceptual to legal areas. In order to propose a convenient use to the latter expressions, we draw on BERLIN’s two concepts of liberty.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document