Constitutionalism in Rough Seas: Balancing Religious Accommodation and Human Rights in, Through, and Despite, the Law

Abstract

Introduction to a special issue of American Behavioral Scientist. The five articles included in the special issue highlight the various ways through which cultural, social, and political contexts affect the balance struck between rights protection and religious accommodation. The contributors accentuate the influence of domestic actors — key elites, courts, political parties, and civil society groups — in shaping the boundaries between the domains of religion and the state in constitutions, laws, and their interpretations, and the consequences of this boundary-drawing for religious polarization and rapprochement. Taken as a whole, the articles discuss the intended as well as the unintended consequences of the legal treatment, or even constitutionalization, of religion.