Russell Sandberg

Cardiff University | CU · School of Law and Politics

Issues concerning religion in the public sphere are rarely far from the headlines. As a result, scholars have paid increasing attention to religion. These scholars, however, have generally stayed within the confines of their own respective disciplines. To date there has been little contact between lawyers and sociologists. Religion, Law and Society...

The worlds of law and religion increasingly collide in Parliament and the courtroom. Religious courts, the wearing of religious symbols and faith schools have given rise to increased legislation and litigation. This is the first student textbook to set out the fundamental principles and issues of law and religion in England and Wales. Offering a su...

Since the early 1990s, politicians, policymakers, the media and academics have increasingly focused on religion, noting the significant increase in the number of cases involving religion. As a result, law and religion has become a specific area of study. The work of Professor Norman Doe at Cardiff University has served as a catalyst for this change...

A comment on the decision in Her Majesty's Attorney General v Akhter & Anor [2020] EWCA Civ 122, in which the Court of Appeal confirmed that unregistered religious marriages are to be regarded as ‘non-qualifying ceremonies’ which are outside the scope of marriage legislation.

During the COVID-19 lockdown the initial British Government mantra of ‘Stay home. Protect the NHS. Save Lives’, the ritualistic weekly public clapping for the NHS and the overall tone of the media coverage led several commentators to raise the question of whether the NHS had become a religion. This question is legally significant. English law provi...

Mr G Conisbee v Crossley Farms Ltd & Ors [2019] ET 3335357/2018 was a preliminary hearing to determine whether or not vegetarianism was ‘capable of satisfying the requirement and definition of being a philosophical belief (protected characteristic) under the Equality Act 2010’. Employment Judge Postle held that vegetarianism did not amount to a phi...

This chapter explores the work of Niklas Luhmann who identified law and religion as two social systems. Bringing together his work on law and religion for the first time, this chapter develops a sociological theory of law and religion. Developing new concepts and theorises deriving from but refining social systems theory, it is proposed that religi...

his introductory chapter explores the development of Law and Religion to date and the drive towards interdisciplinarity. Drawing upon feminist scholarship, it argues that academic fields do not necessarily evolve organically and normatively, but rather their parameters are constructed and authored. An autobiographical reflective and reflexive accou...

Following 9/11, increased attention has been given to the place of religion in the public sphere. Across the world, Law and Religion has developed as a sub-discipline and scholars have grappled with the meaning and effect of legal texts upon religion. The questions they ask, however, cannot be answered by reference to Law alone therefore their work...

Law and Religion has rapidly developed as an academic sub-discipline in English and Welsh Law Schools in the 21st century amidst a significant amount of legislation, litigation, and public debate about religion. However, there are signs that this sub-discipline is becoming inward looking and stagnating. This article takes a step back and uses Nikla...

On 22 January 2019, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe agreed the text of Resolution 2253: Sharia, the Cairo Declaration and the European Convention on Human Rights. This expresses concern about ‘the “judicial” activities of “Sharia Councils” in the United Kingdom. This article explores whether these concerns correctly identify the...

In an age where legal education is undergoing considerable change and facing a number of challenges, the Leading Works in Law series is designed to explore how the study of Law and legal sub-disciplines have developed so far and their likely future. The purpose of the series is to fire critical light at the way in which sub-disciplines within Law u...

This introductory chapter reviews and analyses the development of Law and Religion to date highlighting points of concern.

This chapter explores the need for a feminist approach to Law and Religion through considering Ayelet Shachar’s Multicultural Jurisdictions: Cultural Differences and Women’s Rights as a leading work. On account of it being discussed during Rowan Williams’ infamous lecture on ‘Civil and Religious Law in England’ , Shachar’s book is widely cited. Our...

This chapter explores Maitland’s essays collected as ‘Roman Canon Law in the Church of England’. It argues that this book should be reclaimed as a leading work in Law and Religion - and that it underscore the importance of taking religious law seriously and employing a historical approach to Law.

Leading Works in Law and Religion brings together leading and emerging scholars in the field from the United Kingdom and Ireland. Each contributor has been invited to select and analyse a `leading work', which has for them shed light on the way that Law and Religion are intertwined. The chapters are both auto-biographical, reflecting upon the works...

In recent years, interdisciplinary approaches to legal subjects have become increasingly commonplace. At the same time, interest in the interaction between law and religion has blossomed. However, more often than not, law and religion has developed as an area of study within Law Schools. This chapter explores the interdisciplinary movement within l...

This chapter suggests that, although the literature on religious and legal pluralism has made a number of significant achievements, this literature has begun to perpetuate a particular story that is itself selective and constraining. Paradoxically, the pluralist focus is not pluralist enough. Ironically, although this literature has identified and...

2018 marks the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of the re-issued second edition of Pollock and Maitland’s The History of English Law. The first edition was published in 1895 with a second edition in 1898. The 1968 reissue was important because, although the text itself was not revised, a lengthy introduction and select bibliography was added...

There is no universal definition of religion under English law. Instead, different definitions have been developed by courts and tribunals in relation to different religious rights. Although there have been moves towards the harmonisation of these different definitions, recent decisions have reversed this trend. This article explores for the first...

‘Retroactive continuity”, often abbreviated as “retcon”, is a term often used in literary criticism and particularly in relation to science fiction to describe the altering of a previously established historical continuity within a fictional work. To date, however, the concept has not been used in relation to law. Legal judgments often refer to his...

A long-term and significant effect of the English Reformation of the 1530s has been the marginalisation of scholarship on religious law. Although this has begun to change in recent years, very little attention has been afforded to the defining features of religious law and whether it is useful to talk of a category of religious law. This article se...

This concluding chapter revisits the conflict between positivist and natural law approaches, describing the resultant impasse, and suggesting that it could and should be resolved. It suggests that analysis of how natural law is used within Christian jurisprudence, theology, and to an extent church polity, indicates a number of points of convergence...

Such is the worth and unity of Maitland’s works that anyone who endeavours to tell a piece of it must feel that his first sentence tears a seamless web. Variably hailed as a ‘patron saint’ and ‘the master’, with revisions to his views regarded as ‘heresies’, it is clear that Maitland was and is a classic: he is one of those rare figures who ‘still...

The Divorce (Financial Provision) Bill 2016-17 and Arbitration and Mediation Services (Equality) Bill 2016-17 share several commonalities. Both are Private Members Bills currently before Parliament that have been introduced repeatedly in the House of Lords. Both had a second reading debate on the same day (27th January 2017). Both were received fav...

Two official enquires and one Private Members Bill are currently grappling with the ever- controversial topic of the operation of sharia tribunals in England and Wales. While these developments are valuable in that there is still a missing evidence base in terms of Sharia tribunals, this narrow focus on Sharia misses the point that a wider reapprai...

Academic writing on the place and status of religious tribunals in Western societies has focused upon the ‘minorities within minorities’ debate: the extent to which states should intervene to ensure that the citizenship rights of female group members are protected and that religious tribunals do not discriminate on grounds of sex. In a number of re...

The historical study of law is among the most important domains of global legal scholarship. Indeed, many of the most distinguished academic works on law are historical. And while much scholarly output has focused on ‘textual’ legal history—exploring how legal doctrines, ideas, concepts, principles, and institutions have developed over time—in rece...

About the Book From the murderous reaction to the publication in a French satirical magazine of ‘blasphemous’ cartoons, to wrangles over the wearing of religious dress and symbols in schools and workplaces, the interaction between law and religion is rarely far from the headlines. Indeed, the editors of this Routledge collection argue that, since...

Paradoxically, Legal History is both everywhere and nowhere. The study of History is unavoidable in a common law system based on precedent. Doctrinal legal study is always a historical study; every review of the case law is an exercise in historical analysis looking at how the law has changed over time. It is rare that a legal development is genuin...

Paradoxically, Law and Religion is a new academic discipline which relates to an age old interaction. Tensions between secular authorities and religious convictions are a constant throughout history. Laws have prohibited, constrained, tolerated, enabled, privileged and burdened both religious groups and the religious beliefs and actions of individu...

Staff Seminar delivered at Cardiff School for Law and Politics.

This concluding chapter returns to the questions posed by Silvio Ferrari in his introductory chapter and his distinction between States that employ individual orientated strategies and those who favour community orientated strategies. Revisiting the arguments of Ayelet Shachar, it is argued that both of these strategies are required. Further, it is...

Concerns about legal pluralism, the co-existence of more than one legal system within a state, have become pronounced in recent years, owing to fears about the operation of sharia law in Western societies. At the same time, the concept of legal pluralism has become ubiquitous within legal literature. Paradoxically, the concept is both politically c...

Since the early 1990s, politicians, policymakers, the media and academics have increasingly focused on religion, noting the significant increase in the number of cases involving religion. As a result, law and religion has become a specific area of study. The work of Professor Norman Doe at Cardiff University has served as a catalyst for this change...

In recent years, there have been a number of concerns about the recognition of religious laws and the existence of religious courts and tribunals. There has also been the growing literature on legal pluralism which seeks to understand how more than one legal system can and should exist within one social space. However, whilst a number of important...

At first glance, it appeared to be a technical and dry decision about the operation of the Places of Worship Registration Act 1855, yet the Supreme Court judgment in R (on the Application of Hodkin) v Registrar General of Births, Deaths and Marriages was actually one of the most significant decisions related to law and religion in 2013. The Justice...

Ecclesiastical Law Publications 1987–2012 - Volume 14 Issue 3 - Russell Sandberg

In recent years, there have been a number of moral panics in Western societies about the existence of religious courts and tribunals in general and Shariah law in particular. In England and Wales, these concerns came to the fore following the 2008 lecture by the then Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, on ‘Civil Law and Religious Law in En...

At the dawn of the twenty-first century, something rather unexpected happened: religion became significant again. Since the time of the Enlightenment, great thinkers had been quick to predict that religion would vanish in modern rational society and throughout the twentieth century this broadly became the case. However, the events of the late twent...

This is the report of the project, Social Cohesion and Civil Law: Marriage, Divorce and Religious Courts, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, which explored how religious law functions alongside civil law in the area of marriage and divorce. It examines the workings of three religious courts in detail: a Jewish Beth Din; a matrimoni...

The first decade of the 21st century has witnessed a number of controversies surrounding the interaction between law and religion in the United Kingdom. In particular, tensions have emerged between laws protecting religious freedom and those which prohibit discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation. In particular, Parliament has repeatedly exa...

Derived from the renowned multi-volume International Encyclopaedia of Laws, this convenient resource provides systematic information on how the United Kingdom deals with the role religion plays or can play in society, the legal status of religious communities and institutions, and the legal interaction among religion, culture, education, and media....

The Labour Government (1997–2010) created a large number of new laws affecting religion. The Blair and Brown years saw the incorporation of Article 9 of the European Convention on Human Rights into domestic law, the creation of religiously-aggravated offences, the recognition of civil partnerships, and a tide of legislation affecting education, cha...

A paper presented to the Centre for Law and Religion’s Interfaith Legal Advisers Network (01.03.2010). The paper analyses and critiques the Court of Appeal judgment in the case of Ladele. It suggests that the anaylsis of the question of justification by the appellant court was one sided. The paper explores the implications of the decision in light...

Over the last few years, debates concerning the wearing of Islamic dress, the relationship between religious liberty and free speech and the enforcement of religious law have barely been far from the headlines. In the United Kingdom, a number of legal changes have altered the interaction between law and religion. The piecemeal and passive accommo...

The Human Rights Act 1998 has led to an increase in domestic litigation concerning Article 9 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). Most such cases have been unsuccessful, particularly at higher level. Moreover, such claims have increasingly failed due to lack of interference under Article 9(1) rather than on grounds of justification un...

Recent years have witnessed a considerable growth in legislation and litigation concerning religion. This article examines the implications of the latest change, namely the abolition of the offences of blasphemy and blasphemous libel by section 79 of the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008. First, the article provides the context by examining...

This article contends that scholarship itself has become a barrier to the understanding of church and state relations in Europe. It argues that legal analysis to date has taken an overly narrow approach, focussing purely on the means by which religion is recognised and ignoring the end. The first part of the article elucidates and critiques the thr...

Exemptions for religious groups from generally applicable laws are by no means unusual, especially in the field of discrimination law. However, exemptions from laws prohibiting discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation have proved particularly controversial. The legality of exemptions in regulations prohibiting discrimination on grounds of se...

Academic lawyers frequently distinguish between three models of church–state relations in Europe: state–church systems, separation systems and hybrid systems. However, the sociologist of religion Grace Davie has suggested that by using sociological, historical and legal evidence to understand religion in Europe, we can reveal a basic common ‘Europe...

The debate in January 2007, as presented by the mass media, concerning whether an exemption should be provided for Roman Catholic Adoption Agencies from new laws prohibiting discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation in the provision of goods and services, rested upon two erroneous assumptions. The first was an assumption that awarding exempti...

This is the English language version of a piece which is published in Italian in Dizionario del sapere storico-religioso del Novecento, edited by Alberto Melloni, by Il Mulino (Bologna, 2010). It provides a definition of 'the sociology of the law on religion'. This can be understood as a discipline which studies the interaction between law, religio...

Recent years have witnessed a piecemeal development of discrimination law that affects religious organisations: the collection includes statutes such as the Sex Discrimination Act 1975 and the Race Relations Act 1976, statutory instruments such as the Employment Equality Regulations 2003 and 2005, and international human rights instruments such as...

The legal revolution brought about by the Human Rights Act 1998 has affected arcane legal areas such as the law of exhumation, by questioning whether refusal to grant an application to exhume and move a dead body would breach the applicant's human rights under the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). While the Consistory Courts have been qui...