Today, law permeates and codifies almost all human action. Where there is human action, there is generally a way of doing it according to the law. The law therefore claims to be all-inclusive and passes off itself as an omnipresent and almost omnipotent social device, the content of which everyone must [...]

Human rights, when understood and applied interculturally, offer an interface for translating and mediating values across global diversities. Religions have long done the same, attempting to provide meaning that bridges human-to-human as well as human-to-divine relationships through a universalist ethos. Still, the two are often pitted against each other with religions [...]

Legal systems are traditionally responsible for handling the devolution of assets following the death of a natural person (succession, inheritance). In the digital world, a universe of data relating to the deceased reverberates, managed by various providers on the basis of instructions received during the life of the subject, or on [...]

Among the Western-style democracies, no other country experiences the problem of religion’s place more intensely than Israel. This is the consequence of the ambiguities inherent in the ‘Status quo agreement’, which proclaimed Israel simultaneously a ‘Jewish’ and a ‘democratic’ state. This dualism, which has given rise to a close interconnection between [...]

This essay examines the Italian Cassation Court Ordinance of 17 April 2020 - concerning the recognition of the right to distribute publlicity (‘propaganda’) as claimed by the UAAR (Unione degli atei e degli agnostici razionalisti/Union of Atheists and Rational Agnostics), in accordance with Article 19 of the Italian Constitution. Specifically, the [...]

The restrictions on human movements put into place by states in response to the 2020 global outbreak of the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 have disrupted every category of society, not least religion and law. Freedom of religion has been pitted against right to health across several categories. Areas of conflict such [...]

The following essay offers some legal-philosophical reflections about the current pandemic resulting from the spread of coronavirus Covid-19. These are concentrated around a few core-themes: (1) the role and of mass media and the problem of credibility; (2) the issue of cooperation among states (mostly within the EU); (3) the complex [...]

In response to the Covid-19 epidemic, the government and local authorities have adopted measures which restrict religious freedom. The Italian authorities have imposed urgent and binding ordinances suspending all religious ceremonies, and have limited access to places of worship. These measures are justified by an emergency decree aimed at the protection [...]

The purpose of this essay is to outline a few historical, sociological and political-legal coordinates meant to offer a sufficiently detailed picture of the unique experience of the Indo-Greeks, from their origin to Menander I. At the borderlines of Hellenism, in an isolated but not disconnected context, the Greeks from Bactria, [...]

Overpopulation is a fraught concept because it immediately involves several competing ideas. First, the primary objectives of the human race vis a vis reproduction. Second, conflicting ecological understandings of the planet and the human impact on it, and finally, complex contradictions regarding what humans can and should “do” about all these [...]

This paper focuses on recent Japanese law regarding alternative dispute management tools (ADR). Since ADRs are tools born within American legal culture, their introduction in Japan constitutes a specific case of legal transplant, with significant consequences in terms of acceptance by the receiving legal system. The relative lack of litigation in [...]

This essay aims to carry out an analysis of al-Jahiz’s Book of the Glory of the Black Race from a semiotic perspective. The topic of racial difference is read in light of the theory of categorization that al-Jahiz’s develops in his main work, titled Book of Animals. What is particular to [...]

Religion and economy together constitute the broadest religious marketing system. Everyday the believer, influenced by his/her religion, makes choices that respect the fideistic precepts in which he/she finds himself/herself reflected. Thus, for many years, companies have produced goods and services that are religiously oriented. In this way, the believer-consumer receives a [...]

Recent judicial proceedings involving members of the Sikh community offer the opportunity to reflect on the approach employed by Italian jurisprudence towards “new” manifestations of religious freedom in the ever-changing national social context. The judges have determined that public carry of the kirpan, a symbol that is integral to the principles [...]

In the economic field, the law is often perceived solely for the service function it provides (or should provide) to the benefit of market players. The economy thus drives the creation of negotiating instruments at the service of the great private economic powers. As a result, the weaker "parties" accept negotiating [...]

Despite the assumption that the public sphere is secular, a relationship between religion and law is still present in the daily practice of interpreters of civil law systems. Religious affiliation often leads the faithful to involve religious courts in the resolution of disputes, and to accept their judgements as binding. Religious [...]

Religiously oriented markets have experienced rapid development over the past decade. The production of religious goods, although not without some setbacks, has become one of the main economic activities for many companies. The religious aspects of this market make it both particularly complex to analyze and extremely inviting for businesses. Although [...]

Law is a constitutive element of social life.
The cultural and religious pluralism of contemporary societies raises issues related to encounters between people belonging to different cultures or religions. To solve the consequent problems we have to become able to manage the inevitable “cultural shock” that can derive from such situation. In [...]

An accurate and thoughtful understanding of the Islamic perception of the essential rights of elderly Muslims that considers the substantial contemporary fluctuations and adaptations of their cultural, economic, social, and emotional necessities, evolutions, and renovations calls for attention to Shari‘a (Islamic) principles and religious norms.

The essay addresses the issue of religious parties, specifically the dissolution of the Turkish Refah Partis, ordered by the Turkish Constitutional Court, and subsequently upheld by the European Court of Human Rights. By legitimizing the decisions of Turkish authorities, European jurisprudence affirms the incompatibility of a party inspired by the values [...]

The aim of this essay is to suggest a well-balanced reassessment of the philosophical and political movement called “Libertarianism”. Though its positions seem too aggressive regarding political economy and too weak in the defense of social rights, Libertarian authors tried to build a radical critique concerning the State and the prominence [...]

Still today, the principles of general economic theories do not take in any way into consideration the impact of religious affiliations on economic market systems and on rational consumption patterns.
However, one must not forget that every economic model is also a product of the human kind and for this reason it [...]

The cultural and political climate as well as the values that inspired the Helsinki Final Act of 1975 belong to a distant past. The Gulf War of 1991, which introduced the concept of “just and necessary war,” marks a watershed between the Helsinki Final Act, which interdicts war as a solution [...]

This essay comprises two sections.
The first one presents and explains the proposal to broaden the meaning and scope of “intese” (agreements) between the State and minority denominations. “Broadened intese” is the label employed here to define the attempt to align the “intese” with both the generally pluralistic aspirations of the [...]

In today’s multicultural society, religious freedom must also be guaranteed within food-use patterns. The Milan Charter (Expo 2015) focuses specifically on this issue. Each person has the right to determine his diet according to his lifestyle and his cultural and religious identity. The right to feed oneself according to one’s own [...]

The Paris events have generated a growing islamophobia in Western countries, linked to the fear of “the other”. Those who are different and who do not fit within a given culture are viewed with suspicion and excluded from society. The fear forces therefor the researcher to look for mechanisms to counter [...]

The concepts of blasphemy and sacrilege have traditionally been etymologically related to religious vocabulary. In the current language of secularized contemporary societies it would be preferable to term them as provocation, incitement to hatred, insult. The tangled relationship between disrespect and freedom of expression must therefore be renewed. The issues at [...]

The Islamic religious frontrunners contended that the attitude of Muslims is in contradiction of graven metaphors of any religious figure, including Moses, Jesus, the Prophet of Islam among others, but it is also one of the foremost basics of Islam not to commit violence or attacks, as these obsessive assassins were [...]

The essay analyses the issues that arise in the drafting and interpretation of the last will and testament, exploring the premise that the meaning of each variable depends on its interactions within its cultural contexts of reference. In multicultural and multi-religious societies, interpreting human behaviour or legal acts means that judges [...]

Two fragments of two statutes issued by Constantine, preserved in the Codex Theodosianus and in the Codex Iustinianus, contain the prohibition of jurisdictional activities and of some other forms of work on the dies Solis (Sunday). By means of a detailed survey of the norms issued by the Emperor and his [...]