Conference Room, Villa La Fonte via delle Fontanelle, 18 – San Domenico di Fiesole
23-24 October 2014
Organisers: Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies/European University Institute
This workshop aimed to bring together a group of distinguished judges, scholars and advocates to discuss the tensions between faith-based practices and secular ideals in courts. These insights included: how, despite very different institutional frameworks, the similar ways US and European Courts make room for local variation through a jurisprudence of avoidance; the ways that American style (and often American-backed) litigation activists are transforming what has been a European group-based conception of religious freedom into an individualistic conception; and common strategies through which litigants translate matters of faith into the interests protected by law.
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