Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Acknowledgements
- Contents
- List of Cases
- List of Abbreviations
- List of Contributors
- An Introduction to the Interdisciplinary Considerations of the “Burqa Ban” Trend: Criminalizing the Trivial or Separating National and International Law?
- PART I Interdisciplinary Perspectives on the Strategy of Prohibition
- PART II Legal Perspectives: Religious Clothing, Law, and a Veil-Wearer’s Experiential Account
- Part II Legal Perspectives: Human Rights Perspectives
- Part II Legal Perspectives: National Perspectives
- PART III Responses To Otherness: Gender, Race, And The Veil Factor
- Epilogue
- Index
- About the Editors
The Law and Religious Dress
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 December 2021
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Acknowledgements
- Contents
- List of Cases
- List of Abbreviations
- List of Contributors
- An Introduction to the Interdisciplinary Considerations of the “Burqa Ban” Trend: Criminalizing the Trivial or Separating National and International Law?
- PART I Interdisciplinary Perspectives on the Strategy of Prohibition
- PART II Legal Perspectives: Religious Clothing, Law, and a Veil-Wearer’s Experiential Account
- Part II Legal Perspectives: Human Rights Perspectives
- Part II Legal Perspectives: National Perspectives
- PART III Responses To Otherness: Gender, Race, And The Veil Factor
- Epilogue
- Index
- About the Editors
Summary
Abstract
In this chapter, the Right Hon the Baroness Hale of Richmond DBE, former President of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom, provides a comprehensive study of case law in national and international law for the specific purpose of examining religious freedom and legal justifications for restrictive measures in the area of religious dress. These pertain to indirect discrimination, which rely on the coupling of a proportionate means and a legitimate aim. Lady Hale aims to balance the competing stakes and, in the process of this, she incorporates sources from Sharī’a law. The chapter is based on a lecture which she delivered for the Woolf Institute in Cambridge, England (on 28 February 2019) and also a similar presentation at the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies the year before (2018).
Introduction
I have had an interest in the subject of religious dress since the 1990s, when I was in the Family Division of the High Court trying a childcare case in which the local authority alleged that a young baby's serious head injuries had been caused’ non-accidentally’ by one or both parents. The baby's father was a doctor from Pakistan training for membership of the Royal College of Physicians. His mother was an arts graduate from Pakistan, but they had decided that she would go into full purdah while they were here. That meant a long robe, a face veil, a headscarf, and a black gauze shroud covering the whole of her head and upper body. Parents are compellable witnesses in care proceedings and it was essential that I heard her evidence. But we had an easy solution. Care proceedings are held in private. The judge was a woman. Counsel for the local authority was a woman. Counsel for the child's guardian ad litem was a woman. Counsel for the parents was a man, but it was agreed that she could give evidence behind a screen. Thus, the only male who could see her face was her husband and the only counsel who could not see her was her own.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Law, Cultural Studies and the 'Burqa Ban' TrendAn Interdisciplinary Handbook, pp. 117 - 130Publisher: IntersentiaPrint publication year: 2021