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Émilie Coralie Bouchard - 16th April 2020
The ongoing debate on State laicity in Québec recently took a new twist before the courts. Shortly after the enactment of the new Act respecting the laicity of the State, judicial proceedings were commenced, challenging the prohibition on wearing religious symbols while exercising certain public functions (section 6), and the obligation to have one’s face […]
Mine Yildirim - 11th April 2020
Turkey’s Constitutional Court (Anayasa Mahkemesi – AYM) issued an important judgment in May 2019, addressing State interference in the election of a religious leader, namely the obstruction of the election of a Patriarch for the Armenian community in Turkey. It found such interference not prescribed by law and not necessary in a democratic society. The […]
Tristan Cummings - 17th March 2020
Whether and how a religious marriage is recognised in law has profound consequences for couples and their children. This is the question at the heart of the Court of Appeal decision in Attorney General v Akhter and Khan [2020]. Here, the judges were faced with determining the status of a religious ceremony, conducted in a […]
Tristan Cummings - 4th February 2020
For Jewish women, obtaining a religious divorce (Get) can be life-changing. Women denied a Get are considered ‘chained’ to their husband, preventing them from re-marrying within the faith (whilst not affecting the husband’s ability to re-marry). The power to grant the Get is usually considered the unilateral right of the husband. Because a purely religious […]
Nazila Ghanea Thiago Alves Pinto - 29th January 2020
Parliamentary networks for human rights are not unheard of. Several networks exist which draw attention to the role of parliaments and parliamentarians in the promotion and protection of human rights, for example, the ASEAN Parliamentarians for Human Rights and the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU)’s Committee on the Human Rights of Parliamentarians. The UN General Assembly, the […]
Jonathan Cooper - 1st March 2019
In my last post, I argued that the judgment in Gareth Lee v Ashers Bakery is the consequence of the failure to follow a structured human rights assessment. This is why. Gareth Lee is gay and lives in Northern Ireland. Northern Ireland denies gay men and lesbians the right to marry. Gareth went to a […]
Jonathan Cooper - 1st March 2019
What if? What if the UK House of Lords (as the UK Supreme Court then was) had left the judgment of Lord Justice Brooke in Begum in the Court of Appeal intact? Brooke LJ in that case held that the school uniform policy of Denbigh High School was unlawful under the Human Rights Act because, […]
Raja Dandamudi - 11th October 2018
Recently, a (4:1) majority of a five-judge bench of the Indian Supreme Court in Indian Lawyers Association v. State of Kerala upheld the right of women to worship in the famous Sabarimala temple, irrespective of their age. This judgement struck down a rule which banned the entry of women between the ages 10 to 50 years into the temple. The judgment has thereby sounded the death […]
Olivia Rani Bessant - 9th October 2018
In Lautsi v Italy (2012), the applicant argued that the presence of crucifixes in state school classrooms violated students’ Article 9 ECHR right to religious freedom, but the ECtHR deemed the cross a ‘passive symbol’ and Article 9 respected. Yet in Dahlab v Switzerland (2001),an earlier case the applicant cited, banning a teacher from wearing her hijab […]
John Bowers QC - 3rd July 2018
The most interesting feature of the case of HM Chief Inspector v Interim Executive of Al Hijrah School [2018] IRLR 334 is the split between the reasoning of the majority (Etherton MR and Beatson LJ) and minority (Gloster LJ) in the Court of Appeal. Although they agreed in the result (that there was unlawful discrimination […]
Peter Edge - 18th April 2018
When the same physical space is seen as sacred to different communities, they can become a point of intercommunal tension, and even violence. The Babri Masjid/Ram Temple dispute in Ayodhya has been such a focus for more than 150 years. For many centuries Ayodhya in Uttar Pradesh has been venerated by Hindus as the birthplace […]
Kamilia Khairul Anuar - 16th March 2018
For Indira Gandhi, whose husband converted to Islam and attempted to unilaterally convert their daughter as well, a long legal battle came to an end when the Malaysian Federal Court handed down its judgment, declaring that the conversion had not followed proper administrative procedures and was therefore legally invalid. Being a Muslim is a legal […]