Sweden has been widely recognized as one of the most modern and progressive European democracies. Swedes themselves often claim they are more democratic, progressive, and intrinsically more “freedom-loving” than other nations. The case of Ellinor Grimmark, a Swedish midwife who has been denied the possibility to conscientiously object to performing…
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…
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…
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…
The Roman legal experience teaches us that the issues and perspectives to which today’s intercultural law is dedicated have historical ‘substantial’ precedents in the institution of jus gentium: indeed, praetor pergrinus offered concrete and effective protection to it through its iurisdictio. This aspect of ‘practical application’ was closely tied, on…
The intercultural occurs in the space between two or more distinct cultures that encounter each other, an area where meaning is translated and difference is negotiated. A systemic understanding of this highly complex process calls for interdisciplinary approaches, but scholars are often constrained by conventionalized conceptual languages of their disciplines,…
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…
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…
Europe today is supposed to be a multicultural society in which diversities can coexist within a multicultural public sphere. But the realization of this objective requires new forms of legal equality and traditions of justice which are the main keys of understanding the demands of recognition that rise from the…
In quotidian life, the encounter in space is an encounter of active bodies. It does not occur in a void, but rather within a relational dimension that has been shaped by semantic chisels and interwoven with stories, narrations, and both “real” and “imaginary” recollections. These features of quotidian life are…
