I am presenting a paper on this topic at the University of Notre Dame (Sydney) Law School’s Second Annual Religious Freedom Conference, “Freedom of Belief, Freedom of Action”. The paper is linked here: Freedom to Provide Religious Instruction paper , for those who would like to read it. It surveys recent challenges to the provision of special religious education in public schools, from a religious freedom perspective.
Month: October 2017
Summer Law Elective on “Law and Religion”
For those studying Law at University who would like to be able to do a Summer Elective on “Law and Religion”, I will be teaching one at Newcastle Law School (NSW, Australia) over the 2017-2018 Summer term. Feel free to pass this on if you know someone who may be interested. I of course expect some Newcastle students will be taking the course. But it would be possible for law students from other Universities to do so as well. This would be suitable for a later year law student who may be able to apply to their own University for “cross-institutional credit” into their own law degree.
At the moment it is planned to run the course in a compressed form from 22 Jan-2 Feb 2018. There are two versions being offered at the same time, one suitable for those doing an undergraduate LLB and one for those doing a graduate-entry JD. See further information at https://www.newcastle.edu.au/course/LAWS5035 and https://www.newcastle.edu.au/course/LAWS6095 .
Review of NT discrimination law- guest blog
The Northern Territory government has released a discussion paper called Modernisation of the Anti-Discrimination Act (Sept 2017). It invites comments by 3 December 2017. You can almost get the tone of the paper from the title! After all, who in this fast-changing age could oppose anything called “modernisation”? But there are a number of concerning recommendations and comments made from the law and religion perspective, and there are some real doubts whether the proposals properly reflect religious freedom principles.
My colleague Dr Alex Deagon from QUT has graciously provided a guest blog post in which he outlines his comments on two major concerns with the proposals to amend the Act. Those who are interested in the interaction of discrimination law and religious freedom should find them very helpful, and may wish to make their own comments in response to the discussion paper. There are other controversial proposals in the paper which may be the subject of future posts.
“The Conversation” misleads on impacts of same sex marriage
Two pieces in the Australian online forum “The Conversation” today make misleading statements about the possible impacts of the recognition of same-sex marriage in Australia, and warrant some response. One article suggests that there is no doubt that churches will still be able to decline to solemnise same-sex marriages. The other is a “fact check” on assertions about the mandatory nature of “safe schools” programs following such a change. In my view both pieces are likely to mislead.
Law and Religion Australia 