07 January 2020

Religious Freedoms

'The Right to Freedom of Religion and the Right against Religious Discrimination: Theoretical Distinctions' (Oxford Legal Studies Research Paper No. 14/2019) by Tarunabh Khaitan and Jane Calderwood Norton argues that
while they are often conflated, the right to freedom of religion and the right against religious discrimination are in fact distinct human rights. Religious freedom is best understood as protecting our interest in religious adherence (and non-adherence), understood from the committed perspective of the (non)adherent. The right against religious discrimination is best understood as protecting our non-committal interest in the unsaddled membership of our religious group. Thus understood, the two rights have distinct normative rationales. These differences reveal a complex map of two overlapping, but conceptually distinct, human rights which are not necessarily breached simultaneously.