ABSTRACT
This is a British Isles book. I mean that as a compliment. It’s not just because the chapters herein sparkle with the elegant prose that still typifies much British and Irish academic work – much to the envy of us colonists. It’s not just because the editor, Russell Sandberg, has rapidly emerged as Britain’s brightest new academic star in the field of Law and Religion study – much to the delight of us veterans. It’s also a compliment because many of the ‘leading works in Law and Religion’ featured in these pages are very much country-specific books. To be sure, Harold J Berman’s Law and Revolution, translated into a dozen languages, is a top-tier title anywhere. Legal historians will know FW Maitland’s name, if not his classic title, Roman Canon Law in the Church of England featured herein. A few left-wing scholars may have heard of Winnifred Sullivan’s The Impossibility of Religious Freedom. A few legal pluralists will know Ayelet Shachar’s pioneering work on Multicultural Jurisdictions, especially given Archbishop Rowan Williams’s controversial comment in 2007 about the ‘unavoidable’ need for English courts to accommodate Shari’a and other faith-based family laws. Some comparative religious liberty experts will know Carolyn Evans’ pioneering work on religious freedom in the European Convention on Human Rights, especially since the Strasbourg Court has become so active on these questions of late. But the rest of the scholarly names and titles featured on the foregoing pages – Kevin Boyle, Sir John Robilliard, Francis Lyall, David Maxwell Fyfe, Jean Baubérot, Lucy Vickers, The Right Reverend Christopher Hill, and others – are rather too little known outside the British Isles, although the chapter authors work hard to show how and why they should be part of the Law and Religion canon.
