Conference to be held at the Faculty of Law, National University of Singapore
14 – 15 December 2015

In most eras and cultures, law and religion relate dialectically. Every major religious tradition strives to come to terms with law by striking a balance between the worldly and the spiritual, the structural and the mystical, the rational and the sacred. Every major legal tradition struggles to align its formal structures and processes with the beliefs and values of its people. Thus, while law and religion can be conceptualized as distinct spheres of human life, they do not exist independently but are constantly interacting with and influencing each other.

This project will engage emerging scholarship on the influence of religion on legal systems, both historically and currently, and vice versa. Regulation is our key focus. In simplest terms, we will consider how law regulates religion, and how religion responds to such regulations. The more complex question we ask is how the normativity becomes diversified and drives the regulatory dialectics between law and religion after the institutional development of the latter two.