Blockchain Papers

Loren King

Forms of informal cooperation, coordination, and action that embody mutuality without hierarchy are the quotidian experience of most people. Only occasionally do they embody implicit or explicit opposition to state law and institutions. Most villages and neighborhoods function precisely because of the informal, transient networks of coordination that do not require formal organization, let alone hierarchy. In other words, the experience of anarchistic mutuality is ubiquitous. Subsidiarity frustrates. Emerging from Catholic roots to become an explicit part of EU law,1 the principle admits of clear articulation as an ideal (‘vest authority as close as feasible to those most affected’) but then invites conflicting interpretations and elaborations. As a workable principle, subsidiarity founders seemingly when we need it most: when we ask what, precisely, that principle regulates. Andreas Føllesdal has shown that distinct interpretations of subsidiarity have strikingly incongruous political implications, with any “apparent consensus … gained only by obfuscation” (Føllesdal 1998, 190). And as a moral precept, subsidiarity promises a politics sensitive to diverse needs and responsive to local knowledge; yet in practice, any implementation of the ideal pulls us back toward an authoritative center to regulate disputes and coordinate all of this local wisdom. Jenna Bednar describes subsidiarity as “the soul of federalism” (Bednar 2014, 231) and she has in mind two complementary rationales: ensuring that political power is close to the people affected, while also finding efficient ways to satisfy diverse preferences. Of particular interest in Bednar's account is the epistemic role for subsidiarity in bringing a wider range of perspectives to bear on judging new policies than might otherwise be the case in a more centralized system. Here, then, the justification of subsidiarity appeals to efficiency and accountability, not simply for any given snapshot of needs, interests, and associated policies, but also (and more critically) to the constitutional and administrative system as a whole.2 Still, these epistemic hopes for subsidiarity seem to assume, as Jacob Levy puts it, “a fantastic level of competence, knowledge, and disinterestedness on the part of the body that allocates decision-making authority in each case—itself usually one of the contenders for the authority at stake” (Levy 2007, 462). I love subsidiarity for these frustrations and ambiguities. In this respect, it is the perfect moral maxim for the real worlds of political institutions and practices, where most of us, most of the time, muddle through the messy day-to-day complexities of living together, while leaving space for dissent and resistance. Levy argues that subsidiarity “fails as an institutional decision rule,” but he prefaces that indictment with the thought that it “may offer a useful critical language” (Levy 2007, 462). That, I think, is a thought worth pursuing. Perhaps we will be less frustrated with subsidiarity if we see it not primarily as a decision rule or principle of institutional design, but also, and perhaps more importantly, as an essential challenge to the dominant vocabulary of the sovereign territorial state? To be sure, subsidiarity labors under the long shadow of the Westphalian imaginary, a vision of politics anchored in justifying coercion over a bounded territory. Sovereignty and rights are the coins of that realm. If subsidiarity is to be a critical lens, then it will be laboring against that imaginary, and our settled moral and legal vocabularies so firmly entrenched therein. To make my case, then, this is the labor I will undertake here. On a rather cold and unfriendly morning in October 1625, Rudolph Christian, the newly enthroned count of Eastern Frisia, arrived at the city gate of Emden, expecting that the city would welcome him and immediately start with the traditional ceremonies during which it had to pay homage to its new sovereign. But nobody met Rudolph Christian at the gate, and only later in the day a delegation of the city council appeared at the count's residence, telling him to his great surprise, that it had not been possible to meet him at the city gate because it had not been known through which of the several gates he had wished to enter (Hueglin 1979, 9). Centuries later and half a world away, Clifford Geertz (1980) offers the following story to set the puzzle of his remarkable account of politics and ceremony in precolonial Bali. Dutch administrators, seeking to establish clear designations of local authority and ownership, wished to establish the boundary between two hostile princedoms. The princes agreed that the boundaries were, respectively, wherever one could see the sea, facing outward, or the marshlands, facing inward. Perplexed, the administrators asked if there hadn't been past conflicts over such a murky division: didn't they fight over this territory? “Mejheer,” one of the old leaders replied, “we have much better reasons to fight than these shabby hills” (Geertz 1980, 24–25). Ultimately, things end poorly for the Balinese order. Geertz recounts one of the final encounters of that regime with Dutch forces in 1908, at “Klungkung, the nominal ‘capital’ of traditional Bali” where “the king and court again paraded, half entranced, half dazed with opium, out of the palace into the reluctant fire of the by now thoroughly bewildered Dutch troops. It was quite literally the death of the old order. It expired as it had lived: absorbed in a pageant” (12–13). What binds these two accounts? In each, older forms—and animating symbols and rituals—of political order fall before the imperatives of sovereignty and its most central ordering feature: coercion. Violence. Max Weber's (in)famous claim to monopoly over legitimate coercion within a clearly delineated territory (Weber 1919, 78). In the case of the Balinese order, Geertz means to highlight what our Westphalian-inflected conceptions of politics and the state tend to obscure: “the ordering force of display, regard, and drama” (Geertz 1980, 121). If we invoke our favored analytic categories and causal explanations to reduce the semiotic core of Balinese politics to “the worn coin of European ideological debate” we “allow most of what is most interesting about it to escape our view. Whatever intelligence it may have to offer us about the nature of politics, it can hardly be that big fish eat little fish, or that the rags of virtue mask the engines of privilege” (123). When the homage was finally paid two years later, on the 28th of June 1627, the relation between city and sovereign had indeed been radically changed. In the place of the unilateral obligation of the city, there now was a mutual contract: in exchange for the city's oath of loyalty, the count had to guarantee the city's privileges by an equally binding ‘declaration of rights’. Especially the oath-formula itself appeared fundamentally altered. Where the old oath had spoken of obedience according to customary law between vassals and hereditary sovereign, the new text only spoke of faith between count and city according to mutual contract and in consideration of the city's privileges (Hueglin 1979, 9-10). At the dawn of the sovereign territorial state, then, and sharing so much by way of law and culture, Althusius could negotiate favorable terms of Emden's submission with the fading relevance of local sovereigns. Two centuries later, no such space was possible for the Balinese, and for countless other peoples with distinctive ways of ordering their public lives together. History is littered with peoples who had better reasons to fight than their shabby hills, or who might sometimes fight over shabby hills that they only saw and settled on every few years, before moving on. These peoples lost out to others, whose understandings of use, possession, property, territory, and place were grounded in a particular notion of a right: powers and entitlements to exclude, ultimately grounded in the violence of the sovereign territorial state. The imperatives of territorial sovereignty are distinct from mere control: Henrik Spruyt (Spruyt 1994, 34–35) notes the fundamental novelty of what happens in the decades and centuries after the encounter Hueglin describes. Human territoriality is a deep fact of social life, to be sure; and claims of exclusive and absolute authority are familiar throughout history. The latter, however, were typically made by priests, emperors, and kings, and those claims were over people (bodies and souls), resources, and activities. Territorial jurisdiction was incidental to these desirada, and indeed unimportant insofar as the final authority of divine edict—and of the king or emperor sanctioned by the mandate of heaven—was universal and undifferentiated. In the medieval West, the idea of sovereignty, while a part of medieval thought and law at least from Bodin's famous reflections,3 took a long time to become politically important because it was not clearly differentiated in space: there were no borders delimiting God's power. Spruyt puts the point succinctly: “Church and empire were universalist forms of organization” (1994, 35). This is not to say that claims of territorial jurisdiction were uncommon in human history, but most often they were not claims of exclusive and final authority over clearly bounded physical regions. More often, jurisdictional claims were limited to particular times, people, and activities. Territorial control was incidental to, and derivative of, authority over peoples, activities, and resources. So, what is possible for Emden and some other cities fades as territorial jurisdiction becomes wed to the idea of sovereign territorial states. Possibilities for understanding and implementing complex and overlapping configurations of negotiated, provisional sovereignties become foreclosed under the emerging logics of capital (commerce, exchange, exploitation) and coercion (violence, control, domination), a historical dynamic beautifully elaborated by Charles Tilly (1993).4 Against that history, we so often find ourselves chafing at the legacy of the sovereign state system. Scholars wrestle with how regionally concentrated—and often historically oppressed or marginalized—groups can be fairly and within and most or when those might it from sovereign territorial Scholars with the of and the by peoples, in the and the world has with and if sovereign territorial may and more coercion at borders And and that state and perhaps most us to the of state sovereignty and the of how institutions in fact to with these complexities the of and legitimate coordination with to and indeed the and of the idea of and These are all indeed and I if we might do to some of those ways of ordering public that have been or under the that sovereignty has over Perhaps the of from such us to an understanding of subsidiarity at its a of against that as much as a rule of for What it to subsidiarity not primarily as a principle and an authoritative as a moral principle and but as a of against the dominant vocabulary of territorial sovereignty, and rights of jurisdiction and is as a and not a to and of the old order. after much to in the world we find ourselves have a and moral vocabulary that we can and and that admits of important and But how we the between peoples, and without some idea of And if we that to be a then we can with for the sovereign territorial state as and those This is also to however, that by the between peoples and as a of who has a to territory, we are these in a a and legal that to the idea of a over or and of and are institutional means to those and within a This is the of much by and who has a to what territory and its who as a distinct When and are these claims and what do those rights by way of resources, within a territory, and borders against to These are important and in a and with and our need for and on these is Still, these and labor firmly within the and vocabularies of the Westphalian sovereign state, and a dominant of that realm. are a and we can as engines for and we can territorial of claims of legitimate and of terms of rights ownership, and These are not the only such however, and we perhaps as the principle of to our and not force and political on other other ways of the between and peoples, territory and To this a might what could our to resources, and people other than one of This after the world we find ourselves have a and moral vocabulary from the past can and that and we offer important and to these in of the and of those past But on ways of understanding these if we were to in that what would be the as political those to and the most of ideal do not we long in the of at do not there and claim the of with we not only to our practices, but also to be in and in a world where where such to and where territorial the only feasible way to those rights through and I claim that she is such a but in on territorial sovereignty, an of the historical to the sovereign territorial these historical to the territorial system not because they real for us for the most they social and that no and they In on to that these historical complexities make clear it may be at the territorial system is not a or an political Still, so other in this of a given that we do in fact in a world of sovereign territorial (and associated is she moral justification for our world as a of jurisdictional we see this of political as a firmly historical are there that might or legitimate I not a I with and that state political authority can indeed be least given some of the by I to the on offer by such as and others, claims of for peoples to be on particular but also that the familiar state system is and in critical and that state claims of sovereign control over peoples and claims to in to moral and of that however, I that of I have more of the I what by the fact and our categories and the of authority so often toward the world in a particular and to that world according to their administrative logics and of and I also not a but in this I those have the can about and of political or that state but at the end of the if of a state and then it is a that its and at or use, this is what their their core their most I by as (and the vocabulary of rights when about the of politics, we may be that moral about coercion what so a that state is the or limited to Westphalian and or it to of or it is and its and according to the imperatives of analytic and of not they useful in understanding how our world and in I the territorial rights ultimately in the Westphalian imaginary, this these and and where it is Still, it is how our of, territorial rights in and in or ultimately to so much in moral vocabulary of and territorial jurisdiction a particular that those entitlements to regulate of and in so other not as a deep point of but as a yet historical fact about our and I not for of a territorial state system by the privileges of state and then by that those need be “the we are familiar with in authoritative of public but she that decision-making by and would count as on this would local that typically on a much than famous local for resources, such as local or to the But the of how those and local would be is the of the of territorial sovereignty are to politics, and I we escape that simply by some or the messy but local and that so in of and and the of occasionally in of a centralized To see the more in these of be to a that for their peoples and would this the the other in our world on terms that they would have historically for In that at the they can be our are in and a or ways that their understandings and would have without the of European to our understanding of and legitimate not us to And this the old that we simply their their conceptions of and to Of we and they But for all of our of and and we to in ways that make those the in through the complexities of use, and territorial on and the that are now I think, the only in these to only to while and this not the that is the The one other in in when the of rights is with of how to and place are I between and two this is more than the any other way of life, have in political and These and foreclosed for and the quotidian of and social life, on the that have to the hopes and of and and yet that sovereign have in and in the ways The of these I and and moral and then perhaps of our and ask if our favored ownership, use, jurisdictional territorial be in ways that are not so to the idea of and more to the legacy of that that that our understandings of and and that so for politics and and resources. can the and of the Westphalian on a bounded sovereign authority over territory, and then with our and their or we can that and its at least to some useful we can do the by and and are and in through who has rights to territory, when and and how we about and and But they are much within the Westphalian a little against the and historical of that we do when we ask about the of ways of within these and we find ourselves and often So, we need and moral within the and political we have but we also at those where the and and need not and It may be that we the ways that other other can us the and of at its can be such a a principle of through in ways that against rule by others, while the that we are often with those I of the to the at of this when they to their with the messy of politics as it is in and and villages and neighborhoods and and overlapping that quotidian against a of subsidiarity for and other within sovereign states. In other has as that sovereign territorial can be yet also then consideration (and to the of how a principle of subsidiarity might an institutional “a of by their to of a world but where subsidiarity more coordination at the level is with more local argues for a of control over when that control is to in but those can be by the more fundamental of When claims on and of which subsidiarity is an In a that and the justification of borders against the of than and and the notion that political order and peoples who claim sovereignty over a particular to through sovereignty on a on complex and of deep people, such as and which she terms In through how these of and but also and in of territorial rights and state sovereignty, appeals to an account of I the of account of territorial and on point us to about and in terms that the vocabulary of the sovereign territorial state. The of of what and where and as by and and typically the of of resources. of this is perhaps the story to of complex that few have the and on the by and the Emerging from a between two sovereign the has into a but of and that and that state, and policies to that at least people one and of two sovereign If there is one that what the day-to-day and formal the and and the to of would have to be decision is made that not make to those the of and most importantly, of is to local and and and The in some ways a point about of subsidiarity that are typically as a that any workable implementation of subsidiarity under of social and will require coordination and at of organization, and that the (and on such will be To the that any principle of subsidiarity of to that mandate will require a coordination of diverse of which require that are by as and which authority back toward a one of subsidiarity in the European at of that while subsidiarity has been by as a challenge to more with to it has to be an which some political not least the have to more and 2014, with that might be thought to that in of is not and that “the on are not however, on to that perhaps is better as a for with less on the in of On my favored of subsidiarity as a for critical these simply are not of subsidiarity as a moral and critical do a close between subsidiarity and of the between the epistemic and of subsidiarity within And I this to territorial anchored in what she a of most clearly by of the through with the of and authority in I do however, we need to these in of and overlapping jurisdictional and rights within a sovereign territorial state? If the is that politics is about and our then perhaps subsidiarity can be the core moral rather than sovereignty and rights of jurisdiction and perhaps more as the critical been subsidiarity is a that sovereignty, and control rights from and of the and in which so much of our most What of the at the by Andreas Føllesdal and several others, that interpretations of subsidiarity authoritative of the principle to to be a not with subsidiarity and not with subsidiarity as a critical lens, but with constitutional that the of their frustrations of by of human and the of politics as the of particular sovereign territorial states. to consensus on interpretations of political we claim to In such an however, constitutional and may not be a but a subsidiarity is as much about through in as it is a to challenge sovereign imperatives and their dominant In a world that has the of Westphalian territorial sovereignty, the imperatives of and which to toward the of with a critical have a that is perhaps If a on subsidiarity can us then it is The is to and for their on these and for their two on and subsidiarity at the of This from with and with at the Subsidiarity from two with this and in particular from by and Andreas Føllesdal on the of On the for to the dominant vocabulary of state sovereignty, I have much over the years from Hueglin and the The no conflicts of

Méadhbh McIvor

THE LAW OF ORGANIZED RELIGIONS: BETWEEN ESTABLISHMENT AND SECULARISM By Rivers, Julian Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2010 Pp. 400. Hardcover, $120.00. CHRISTIAN SLAVERY: CONVERSION AND RACE IN THE PROTESTANT ATLANTIC WORLD By Gerbner, Katharine Philadelphia, PN: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018 Pp. 296. Paper, $24.95. LAW AND IDENTITY IN COLONIAL SOUTH ASIA: PARSI LEGAL CULTURE, 1772–1947 By Sharafi, Mitra Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2014 Pp. 368. Paper, $36.99. In November 2018, President of Ireland Michael D. Higgins signed into law the thirty-seventh amendment to the Irish Constitution, removing the word “blasphemous” from Article 40.6.1.i (which prohibited “the publication or utterance of blasphemous, seditious, or indecent matter”). A crime since the document’s 1937 ratification, the blasphemy provision was scrapped after a public vote in which nearly sixty-five percent of participants agreed to its removal. Ireland’s Constitution can only be changed by referendum. The blasphemy vote was one of several such referenda held in recent years. It followed the May 2018 decision to repeal the eighth amendment (which, by giving equal legal status to both the fetus and the woman carrying it, criminalized abortion) and 2015’s equal marriage referendum, in which Ireland became the first country to legalize same-sex marriage by popular vote. Given that the official Catholic hierarchy campaigned heavily against both proposals, these votes were read as evidence that the Church was no longer the primary guiding force for the Irish people. For many outsiders, this spate of referenda—and the changing place of the Catholic Church that they were taken to signify—was met with glee: proof that the arc of history bends toward social liberalism. If conservative, religious Ireland could vote to legalize same-sex marriage, the New Yorker breathlessly suggested, so too could Mississippi (Sorkin 2015)! While some celebrated, however, others wondered how bans on abortion and blasphemy could have survived so late into the twenty-first century. “The population has moved on, [people are] no longer controlled by the Catholic Church, but a lot of the laws that were put in place are still there,” argued Michael Nugent, the head of Atheist Ireland and a veteran campaigner against the blasphemy law. “We have to chip away at them and get the state to catch up with the people” (Graham-Harrison 2018). But what would this “catching up” look like? Narratives of legal and cultural progress in which conservative religious shackles are slowly shed may make for good copy, but they rarely reflect the complicated reality governing the interaction of law, politics, and religion in contemporary nation-states. Indeed, studying the historic interaction of religion and law in named polities—that is, the law’s regulation of religion, religion’s influence on legal norms, and the semisubmerged theological underpinnings of many contemporary legal categories—is more likely to lead to recognition of the contingency of these relationships than to an acceptance of the “tidy stories” in which one is slowly filtered out from the other (Johnson, Klassen and Sullivan 2018, 5). This review offers three case studies as an introduction to historical accounts of law and religion. Focusing on the law’s regulation of religion and religion’s salience to law in post-Reformation England, the seventeenth-century Caribbean, and British-controlled India, these historical investigations of the law-religion nexus shed light on the broader contexts in which states, constitutions, communities, and “religions” are formed and governed. In particular, they emphasize the ways in which legislation concerning “religion” has involved the production and regulation of difference in multicultural, multiethnic, and multireligious states. This is demonstrated by, inter alia, the changing place of the established church in England, where the distinction between Catholic and Protestant has been somewhat superseded by the distinction between religion and the secular; the role of Christian missionaries in the racialization of slavery in the Americas, where legally enshrined Protestant supremacy developed into white supremacy; and the strategic mobilization of the law in India, where the embrace of litigation cemented a distinctive ethnoreligious identity among Zoroastrian Parsis. As all three regions struggle with political polarization and the normalization of ethnonationalism, these works shed light on the historical developments underlying such divisions, offering much needed context for scholars working in and on these countries today. If “law and religion” is a growing subfield of legal and/or religious studies, it is one that raises definitional issues familiar to scholars of both. So notes Julian Rivers’ The Law of Organized Religions, which begins: “This is a systematic study of English law as it applies to organized religions. None of these terms is particularly satisfactory” (vii). Given this difficulty, Rivers’ ability to synthesize centuries of legislation and legal cases into a coherent narrative is impressive. Beginning with the Roman conquest of Britain circa 43 CE, he provides an overview of the legal regulation of religion(s) to the present day, albeit with a focus on developments from the nineteenth century onward. It is an undeniably ambitious project, not least because, as he puts it, there is no clear “constitutional principle” that could be said to govern organized religion in English law (345). The narrative he tells is one of rising religious diversity (and tolerance of that diversity) alongside the emergence of a commonly held belief that church and state ought to be kept separate. By the mid-nineteenth century, English law had begun to move from the assumption that all religions were unlawful unless they were specifically recognized and provided for to the assumption that all religions were lawful so long as they were not outlawed. In this way, the “changing law of Church and State [is characterized by] a slow transition from the maintenance of one true religion to the principle that there is, in law, no false religion” (24). (Another way of putting it, as Rivers intimates, is that all religions are now recogniszd as being equally false, legally speaking.) Given the coterminous fact of religious establishment and separationist assumptions, the Church of England (CoE) has come to function as a kind of paradigm for church-state engagement, normalizing the presence of religion in public life for both established and nonestablished traditions. “This dynamic tension,” Rivers suggests, “has been the substitute for any statement of constitutional principle” (345). This is a story in which religious establishment and religious pluralism, although initially opposed, increasingly rely on one another to justify their place in the public sphere. Establishment continues, but it is no longer the explicitly discriminatory, punitive regime of prior decades. Indeed, representatives of the established church increasingly seek to speak on behalf of those framed, in the parlance of our times, as people of faith (as opposed to people of a particular faith, religion, or tradition)—a sharing of privilege only thinkable in a context where the critical difference is no longer that between Anglicans and Catholics, but between people “of faith” and those who do not so identify. (“Religion,” as former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams once put it, is increasingly seen to be the preserve of “oddities, foreigners and minorities” by members of the political class [Batty 2009]; and such oddities must stick together.) While this move toward religious pluralism has made it easier for members of nonestablished traditions to organize their worlds according to religious precepts and practices, it has also been accompanied by a “thoroughgoing process of secularization” that Rivers worries will impact this relatively newfound ability (25). In particular, he argues that the state’s tendency to view religious liberty as a matter of individual conscience (as opposed to actions, practices, and community norms and standards) is a troublingly narrow understanding of what religious freedom means (30–36). This strand of analysis runs throughout the book, which is critical of legal efforts to enforce normative, romanticized visions of what religion “is” or should be (for example, through requiring religious organizations to be “publicly beneficial” for the purposes of charity law, or by insisting that these organizations comply with equalities legislation in the same way other associations are expected to). Following an initial overview of the history of English law and religion, the book then adopts a thematic approach, discussing legislation and case law relating to, among others, ministers of religion; chaplaincies; faith-based welfare; and religious schools. Rivers does an admirable job of highlighting the ambivalence that seems to undergird much of the relationship between religious organizations and the law. For example, Chapter Three focuses on what he terms “the centre of the law of organized religions,” that is, “the legal constitution of religious bodies” (72). Historically, this relationship has been defined by ignorance or hostility, at least for nonestablished traditions. Roman Catholic and Jewish organizations, for example, could be easily disrupted by a legal system that did not recognize their institutional structures or social forms. More recently, however, the situation has been marked by a different kind of tension, one in which judicial oversight is simultaneously requested and resented. Religious organizations may seek the protection of the law, but they are also wary of submitting themselves to secular power. Similarly, the courts are keen to protect religious citizens even as they are wary of venturing into disputes that might be deemed “theological.” As a result, today’s English judges are (in theory) less willing to rule on issues relating to doctrine than their nineteenth-century forbears, either these in or to the of a Rivers suggests, not as a of the between regulation and but there are of and as to its If a religious a on an that the as or theological (as opposed to there may be the courts the these judges between theological and legal is, of a matter of A is in the state’s regulation of religious as which one of the of church-state law. the of New a faith-based no longer a historic but have been as of a of a tendency to public to In to with the and other Protestant the state also and the of faith are While this has been by many religious Rivers notes that it has not come state to state The of religious to and that to equalities legislation “the to which the law of is into a in which only specifically religious and As faith are a particularly clear of Rivers’ they efforts to recognize religious pluralism by on a by also secular norms and that as a to these Rivers’ is not only It is also in a of what he the of is critical of efforts to church and state and worries state into religious that although courts are increasingly willing to recognize that religious issues are they to to of the public Indeed, he that and diversity have the to in the one this will influence to the may with the that state efforts to by religious on the of or (for example, as the of are as after at least some of the for such norms from the these could as easily that these religious are by their as that their religious are by the there is a to be made that inter alia, and should be in of religious and Rivers for religious on these he to with the fact that religious liberty for some may come at the of and that is by the fact that religious is place at the same as the of secular and assumptions, on religious organizations not ought to be these would be for not to religious liberty as an In the since The Law of Organized was first religion and have to make is some evidence that judges have taken on Rivers’ of state for example, which held that Christian could not be to a with the the case law Rivers’ view that there is no “constitutional principle” governing this (345). In legal more the situation is For this of principle is A coherent of law would religious and individual citizens to where they what is expected of and from which laws they can For these the of a of religion in English law. For our however, the English case is it a guiding the law is of the fact that it has developed in to political both and to the of tolerance and as to be and to the in religious by the of As Rivers puts it, “The relationship between law and religion in any country is a of historical and England is for the legal likely to from its from the In a increasingly the regulation of religious diversity a and the “law of organized will be an of legislation and litigation long is this more than in the of and religion in what Katharine Gerbner, in recent book Christian “the Protestant on from the and from the through to the late how Protestant missionaries were in the legal of white supremacy and slavery in the More the move from Protestant supremacy (in which Protestant was with liberty and political to (in which although it was deemed with to white supremacy which than religion, had the of In so to of the and and a somewhat romanticized of Protestant missionaries as the of By how these missionaries to slavery to their Christian to legislation that Protestant status was with If their can be as the of the they should also be the long history of for of these to the lot of contemporary white supremacy has its in their efforts to this of This is an As much historical on in the focuses on its relationship to the not for their to such as the and have had scholars a into their As a of those with the for from the these Protestant missionaries and a for Christian slavery that the for the of the and nineteenth focuses on to the of from the to the late In the were that As they were opposed to the religious of those they had and missionaries with By the of the century, however, the emergence of the doctrine of Christian slavery had many such to the presence of some of as a means of and than their a of and legislation to make the case that and missionaries a role in this the for a to Chapter for example, which the for the of the in efforts to focuses on the of named and in New and to the of Protestant supremacy by the of with laws to the of Christian all to make a that they did not seek of any to from the and to their Chapter Christian to the in legislation of the word with the word as a of While have long recognized that from the this by on the relationship between the of and the of In for example, this salience in to the but population of By the late century, some members of this community were for according to English law, to be and Given that could all these to the relationship between and political The result, was the legal of a for this growing community from the to vote or for For example, between and the was rarely in Indeed, it three in years. its between and which the community was in the first of the century. The of the by an As the century, had as the primary of such as the for the of and white and the to and preserve the of legally both and of to the status of a of their religious or cultural While these to place throughout the This the in New and the of which to to the of by a that “the of not the of the as to or While had been a in the legal of those example, as in the case of who for freedom in in on the of and of of the century the of freedom from the context in which the of historical on and slavery in and the focuses on and where were into the Catholic Church against their some in which Protestant and Catholic missionaries and could one efforts at and In this way, slavery in to Catholic Similarly, among the Protestant a role in the different to for the of The Church, for example, in to from the Christian does not away from the and underlying one of the that of While some scholars the for and/or (in to religion by that one one system for it than the of to recognize this tension, a of and how and their in Christian for many some of which would have their recognized the of Protestant some as a way of and as a means of or slavery some will have been of the or of will have involved a of some example, those of have been out against the of or The case of a on in is a of the of for the and of While the the of white named is not It is likely that was by it would social or or not it an had a narrow of The same is true of the many other or with to their was an in a context of and and are “the and missionaries in the and a and religious for a system of This and to the former on which Christian Given the out and by to book is It is an for scholars and to and in our While some have or religious others the law to such was the case with Zoroastrian in the lead up to embrace and of law is the of Mitra Law and in Focusing on of the legal system from to both the of a system of law and interaction with the legal system as legal to law, and the law that controlled them by into the legal system than to English norms or their identity to the of the of them to its and to protect themselves by interaction with the the did the the of of at the of the legal and political 5). by the ways in which Zoroastrian from other in British-controlled circa While and were of law law were taken to legal As they were according to the laws of By the of a century however, the situation was only had the courts to a of law, but they had also some of the and were in English law and both working in courts and them to disputes with their Parsis. in legal was by what a In the century, the community was made up of throughout in where the community was the were only percent of the they made up percent of involved other so in the The is In to being willing to those from the community to were also willing to legalize Given that might have in a to issues the community out of a to interaction with or regulation by the seems to than on or doctrine as an focuses on the institutional that to to law. notes that they did not have at the community A there was no clear hierarchy in and the role was one of than the provision of or will to the the of a legal to or which law was an and subfield of religious (72). other in that recognized law could to had come to from between the and centuries no such of law to which to of their had been in of in other of religious may have been as a of changed the organized themselves into that and for the of legislation to marriage and English legal norms with those that this their system of law, a system by and In marked to the situation and communities, the of which were by a law system that on than were to their community and to their understanding of also how such the law to of particular is of which a role in to the as a of community While the of and in has on of a of cases to emphasize the of studying between This is a to the on and and the cases to this and on and of the racialization of community For both and the century a focus on the of as a of true This is in cases such as the of a was into the Zoroastrian religion at the of was likely was as been to an Christian This a of to seek to from the members of the community could the and the The presence of the would a the of community was the religious and or and on the of the first of the (and a of a understanding of the in held that although could be to the on a was not to by decision an increasingly of identity not only on and religion, but on as as a spate of against those who a light on “changing and religion this For a community that their distinctive identity would unless was “the of the the of of suggests, the focus on as a of the of or could not to the laws they to of the and by But being was no longer the Zoroastrian what was it In as an Given the that so it is no that these so out in (and the role of the law in of it is no that a and of was also a is in of the impact of legal analysis of and individual legal all that made law was not Zoroastrian as much as it was the fact that made also of that “law also made the for example, in the way legal this of the relationship up much less in the and the is to and were not more by legal than is as the fact that is working with historical it to the impact of these cases on an it a not least the religious and or cemented by the law system so in contemporary this with a As will no have not a not in the study of the If has not with in the focus this review on legal to the of law and the of one is that the present on the are with other tendency to between to from one context to or to relationships between and for example, that the present do not the that view today’s as the of the is to in a that its from the and works to them are what is the three is how contemporary much of the historical In England, the Americas, and India, legal disputes on the of ethnoreligious to make In all three the history the by the of a on the of for example, with the legal establishment of in England, as Julian Rivers does in The Law of Organized Similarly, the into the system studying the racialization of slavery in the century, as Katharine Christian the contemporary to the and rule to the law of which Mitra Law and such light of to be the is equally As scholars of law and religion, must be to the both and of of religious and to Ireland’s recent of constitutional who can both The New and Atheist Ireland’s Gerbner, Rivers, and for of law and religion to