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…
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…
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…
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 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 as…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
