About

This site presents open access English-language resources and analysis of legal cases and associated background materials from different parts of the world. The cases feature different legal, political and religious institutions, histories and traditions. The aim is to provide a series of templates for thinking creatively and comparatively about law, religion, culture and politics—and their complex intersections—in a variety of distinctive contexts.

Designed for teachers, students, scholars, researchers, and policy-makers, these materials will be of interest to the disciplines of religious studies, political science, anthropology, critical theory, sociology, international relations and legal studies. They will also be of interest to legal practitioners, human rights advocates, and others working at the practical intersections of religion, law and politics.

These teaching modules were developed under the auspices of two collaborative research projects supported by the Henry R. Luce Initiative on Religion and International Affairs and “Politics of Religion at Home and Abroad.” For a short introduction to the study of the intersections of law and religion, see Winnifred Sullivan and Robert Yelle’s 2005 essay “Law and Religion.”

This site is being curated by Winnifred Fallers Sullivan and Elizabeth Shakman Hurd, building on and expanding our earlier work with Peter Danchin and Saba Mahmood in the “Politics of Religious Freedom” project. We would like to thank all of the contributors to individual modules and to the syllabi collection, Toby Volkman and the Luce Foundation for supporting both projects, Luce postdoctoral fellow Sarah Dees and project assistant Jeff Wheatley for their excellent design and editorial assistance, and Northwestern University for hosting the site.