ABSTRACT
The increasing privatization of the judicial functions of the state has indi rectly created a new front in the management of intercultural relations – namely, the claims for legal selfregulation posed by some ethnic and reli gious groups. These claims not only question the state monopoly on the production and interpretation of the law but also compromise the formal guarantees that the ‘rule of law’ is conventionally assumed to provide. This formula is commonly understood as the requirement that authority should be exercised within a framework of public norms (Waldron 2008). This notion of lawful process goes back to the English Magna Carta in the Mid dle Ages, which stated,
No free man shall be seized or imprisoned, or stripped of his rights or pos sessions, or outlawed or exiled. Nor will we proceed with force against him, except by the lawful judgement of his equals or by the law of the land. To no one will we sell, to no one deny or delay right or justice.
