Law, religion and public reason

Abstract

This chapter proposes that scholars of law and religion can learn much from debates over ‘public reason’ that have preoccupied liberal political philosophers over the last twenty-five years. The often highly abstract and technical character of such debates can make them seem remote from concrete legal questions. We seek to show, however, that they bring to the fore fundamental questions about both the relation between law and religion and the very legitimacy of law in a religiously pluralist yet increasingly secularised society, in which the majority of citizens, and many legal practitioners, lack familiarity with the character of religious belief and practice.