Velasco Ibarra Arguelles, Eugenio Enrique;
(2020)
Adjudicating the right to freedom of religion or belief in the liberal state.
Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London).
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Abstract
In this dissertation, I state the case for the most robust judicial guarantee of the individual right to freedom of religion or belief which is compatible with the principle of equal liberty. In so doing, I endorse a decidedly liberal conception of religious freedom, which accords legal relevance to certain beliefs and practices because of the instrumental value they have for the individuals that hold them and engage in them. This conception stands in stark contrast to those which pick out certain beliefs and practices qua legally relevant based on some intrinsic quality. In a liberal state, then, the scope of the right to freedom of religion or belief is determined by the meaning that individuals assign to certain beliefs and practices. That the beliefs and practices which concern this right must be identified irrespective of any other criteria is required by the liberal commitment to treating individuals as free and equal persons, capable of forming, revising, and pursuing self-authenticating conceptions of the good. The laudable judicial and scholarly attempts to realise this ideal inadvertently fall back on non-liberal conceptions of religion in order to determine whether a belief and/or practice, in the context of a particular litigation, is protected by the right in question. In order to remedy this shortfall it is necessary to eschew what I call the dominant approach which endorses individual exemptions allotted by way of an objective evaluation of beliefs and a test of individual sincerity. Instead, the liberal paradigm is best served when judges are bereft of any information about the particular beliefs of claimants and/or the motivations for their actions. This judicial treatment of the right to freedom of religion or belief best respects its universal character and discloses its potential as a general right to liberty.
| Type: | Thesis (Doctoral) |
|---|---|
| Qualification: | Ph.D |
| Title: | Adjudicating the right to freedom of religion or belief in the liberal state |
| Event: | UCL (University College London) |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | Copyright © The Author 2020. Original content in this thesis is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) Licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Any third-party copyright material present remains the property of its respective owner(s) and is licensed under its existing terms. Access may initially be restricted at the author’s request. |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of Laws |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10096640 |
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