Hide
Раскрыть

Mikhail Antonov

Normativity and Facticity in Protection of Religious Freedom

2018. No. 3. P. 24–49 [issue contents]
The paper considers the legal and philosophical issue of the correlation between facticityand normativity in the aspect of regulation and protection of religious freedoms in thepast contemporary Russian law. The paper suggests considering in this aspect the gapbetween the normative content and the meaning of the corresponding norms of Russianconstitution and statutory law and the implementation of these norms in court and lawenforcementpractice. The author argues that the liberal norms transplanted from Westernlegal orders into Russian law do not fit well the symbolic sphere of the post-SovietRussia where religion itself serves as one of the cornerstones of national identity and asa major constituent element of the state ideology. In factual court practice, constitutionaland statutory norms about freedom of conscience are shaped contrary to their primafacie meaning. The lack of tolerance in Russian society leads to the fact that many nontraditionalreligious denominations are considered as socially unacceptable, and for thisreason there emerges a societal attitude against the non-traditional religious denominations.Being formally under the authority of the law, judges and other adjudicators arein fact under the influence of many factors among which one can mention different programsand declarations by the political leadership and by state officials, as well as thepublic opinion. In author’s opinion, this leads to the integration of the religious conceptionsof the «traditional» denominations into Russian legal order, which is illustrated in therecent statutory amendments concerning the protection of “religious feelings’ and in thepractice of enforcement of the anti-extremist legislation. From the legal and philosophical standpoint, this situation shows the ambiguity of the interrelation between the normativepropositions that guarantee the freedom of conscience and the factual frameworks ofapplication of these propositions in Russian law. In author’s opinion, this example of thisambiguity of the facticity/normativity divide in what concerns the protection of religiousfreedoms justifies also addressing this divide and its implications in other fields of legalregulation.
Citation: Antonov M. (2018) Normativnost' i faktichnost' v zashchite religioznykh svobod [Normativity and Facticity in Protection of Religious Freedom]. Pravo. Zhurnal Vysshey shkoly ekonomiki, no 3, pp. 24-49 (in Russian)
BiBTeX
RIS
 
 
Rambler's Top100 rss