Current Issues in Law and Religion

Despite the 1948 UN Declaration that freedom of thought, conscience and belief is a universal human right, contemporary political elites have resurrected the old Marxist idea that religion is a crutch for the weak. Contemporary political correctness would outlaw religious free speech whenever it offends. This collection of five research essays by Honour students, staff and friends of the University of Notre Dame’s Sydney School of Law:

• interrogates the philosophical idea of harm that underlies such offence,

• tests whether religious free speech is entitled to the same protection as other speech,

• notes the consequences of proscribing the free exercise of religion in totalitarian regimes,

• identifies some of the ways in which new gender rights conflict with established freedoms, and

• wonders why Singapore, the United States and Australia have all failed to implement the freedom of religion intended of religion in the 1948 UDHR and the 1966 ICCPR.

The insights here are not all comfortable, but they confirm that human rights ideas do have consequences.