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Bluebook 21st ed.

John Witte Jr., The Lautsi Papers: Multidisciplinary Reflections on Religious Symbols
in the Public School Classroom, 17 ECC LJ 240 (2015).

ALWD 6th ed.

Witte, J. ., The lautsi papers: Multidisciplinary reflections on religious symbols in
the public school classroom, 17(2) Ecc LJ 240 (2015).

APA 7th ed.

Witte, J. (2015). The lautsi papers: Multidisciplinary reflections on religious
symbols in the public school classroom. Ecclesiastical Law Journal, 17(2), 240-242.

Chicago 7th ed.

John Witte Jr., "The Lautsi Papers: Multidisciplinary Reflections on Religious
Symbols in the Public School Classroom," Ecclesiastical Law Journal 17, no. 2 (May
2015): 240-242

McGill Guide 9th ed.

John Witte Jr, "The Lautsi Papers: Multidisciplinary Reflections on Religious Symbols
in the Public School Classroom" (2015) 17:2 Ecclesiastical LJ 240.

MLA 8th ed.

Witte, John Jr. "The Lautsi Papers: Multidisciplinary Reflections on Religious
Symbols in the Public School Classroom." Ecclesiastical Law Journal, vol. 17, no. 2,
May 2015, p. 240-242. HeinOnline.

OSCOLA 4th ed.

John Witte Jr, 'The Lautsi Papers: Multidisciplinary Reflections on Religious Symbols
in the Public School Classroom' (2015) 17 Ecc LJ 240

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240 BOOK REVIEWS

pluralism, including a description of the millet system under the Ottoman

Empire, which could itself have been a chapter. Nevertheless, the common
vision of this volume is to encourage dialogue with religions and between reli-
gions. Its strength is its diversity, which shows how the religious voice can speak
through democratic pluralism to a wider public, and it raises questions of how
models of pluralism can more readily accommodate religion. It will reach a
liberal readership but it should also reach those in organised religions who
may need to do things to accommodate accommodation.

MICHAEL HOLDSWORTH
University of Birmingham
doi:1o.1o1 7/SO9 5 6618X1 5 0001 5o

The Lautsi Papers: Multidisciplinary Reflections on Religious Symbols

in the Public School Classroom
Edited by JEROEN TEMPERMAN
Martinus Nijhoff, Leiden, 2012, Studies in Religion, Secular Beliefs and Human
Rights n1, xxviii + 444 pp (hardback E155) ISBN: 978-90-04-22250-2

This expansive - and expensive - collection of 16 essays offers a wide range of

disciplinary, comparative and political perspectives on the intersection of reli-
gion, secularism and human rights in modern Europe. The starting point for
most authors is Lautsi v Italy (2011), the European Court of Human Rights
case that upheld the display of a crucifix in an Italian public school classroom
against a religious freedom challenge. But the chapters also range over sundry
other questions of the legitimacy of religion in public schools and other state
institutions - whether state-sanctioned religious symbols and ceremonies,
private religious rituals, ornamentation and attire by students and teachers, or
various local community forms of spiritual instruction, activity and expression.
The topic is propitious for modern-day Europe and the editor is ambitious in
trying to give voice to a wide range of perspectives. But the collection is ultim-
ately a bit of a jumble, which a good editorial introduction, index and bibliog-
raphy only partly offset. Western and eastern European civilians, English,
Canadian and American common lawyers, child psychologists, philosophers
and semioticians are all crowded together to make their specialised cases for
and against religion in public schools and public life, some more successfully
and clearly than others.
The book does have several strong chapters that provide useful points of com-
parison, especially for religious freedom and human rights scholars. For
example, the leading Italian jurist Silvio Ferrari offers a very interesting
 ECCLESIASTICAL LAW JOURNAL 241

quantitative analysis of the European Court's religious freedom rulings between

1959 and 2009. He shows, tellingly, that majority Orthodox countries lost 79 per
cent of the religious freedom cases brought under the European Convention on
Human Rights, while Catholic countries lost only 9 per cent of the time, notably
including Italy in Lautsi.
The Dutch and Belgian legal philosopher Jean-Marc Piret offers a close ana-
lysis of the jurisdictional questions at stake in Lautsi. Despite his own preference
for a purely secular public sphere and classroom, Piret contends that the Grand
Chamber in Lautsi correctly adopted 'an attitude of judicial restraint' (p 83) in the
case. He urges that the European Court should, in future cases, endeavour to
protect core human rights without imposing inflexible standards of state neu-
trality on nations with diverse legal and religious traditions.
The editor, the Dutch religion and human rights expert Jeroen Temperman,
takes the opposite view. After carefully identifying the central rights claims (and
claimants) in cases such as Lautsi, he argues that the European Court should
require European states 'to ensure that everyone can enrol in public schools
without conscientious trouble' (p 167, emphasis added). According to this
view, state-sanctioned religious symbols and ceremonies are simply out of
place in public school classrooms, given the growing numbers of professed athe-
istic students and parents and the diverse religious populations now in place.
When national governments abrogate their duty to provide adequately neutral
education, as Italy did with its crucifix law, the Court should play 'a catalyst
and occasionally counter-majoritarian' role to compel compliance (P 173).
The leading American religious liberty scholar Brett Scharffs, informed in
part by American religious liberty jurisprudence, contends that religious
symbols have diverse and malleable meanings - meanings that are properly
interpreted by the (local) communities in which they are used. He argues
that, whenever possible, courts should give local communities the interpretive
space they need to develop the meanings that are appropriate to them: 'When
courts give official sanction to a particular interpretation of a symbol, this has
the jurispathetic effect of killing other competing interpretations.' This symbolic
violence is unnecessary and 'antithetical to the very character and purpose of
symbols' (p 58).
Finally, the Dutch political philosopher Wouter de Been offers a creative
re-interpretation of 'inclusive' state neutrality, using theories adapted from
Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein's popular 2008 book, Nudge. De Been con-
tends that the complete removal of religious symbols from public institutions
would represent a form of secular iconoclasm - not an indifferent form of reli-
gious neutrality, as some other authors argue. In de Been's view, public schools
more than any other institutions are responsible for transmitting a nation's
culture and values to the next generation. Thus, rather than completely remov-
ing religious symbols from public schools, states should make schools 'an
242 BOOK REVIEWS

acceptable default option for the overwhelming majority of its citizens' (p 183),
while providing reasonable alternatives for those who might object.
These and other essays in The Lautsi Papers are sure to spark fruitful debates
about religion, secularism and human rights in European classrooms, legisla-
tures and elsewhere. Such debates will become increasingly heated in other
parts of the world, too, as immigration, globalisation and secularisation all
bring major shifts to local populations and political attitudes toward religion,
tradition and culture.

JOHN WITTE JR
Center for the Study of Law and Religion, Emory University
doi:10.101 7/SO 9 5 6618X1 5 000162

Conciliarism: A History of Decision-making in the Church

PAUL VALLIERE
Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2012, Xi ± 289 pp (hardback L64-99)
ISBN: 978-1-107-01574-6; (paperback 119.99)ISBN: 978-1-107-44871-1

This is a fascinating introduction to conciliarism: 'decision-making by means of

councils, that is to say, by means of formally constituted, trans-local leadership
assemblies called together to resolve issues affecting the life and ministry of the
church ... a complex phenomenon, assuming a variety of forms in the history of
the Church' (P 7). The book is by turns informative, intriguing and frustrating.
Paul Valliere is Professor of Religion and Humanities at Butler University
Indianapolis, with strong academic interests in Orthodoxy and, interestingly,
Pentecostalism. As an experienced academic, his account of conciliarism is
highly accessible both in terms of the information he imparts, and the way he
imparts it. He has the history at his fingertips and he seems well aware from
his acquaintance with Pentecostalism that 'the conciliar tradition [may be]
undercut by the authority of ... wonderworkers' (p 91).
In the first three chapters, he takes his readers sure-footedly, and with light-
ness of touch, from the New Testament record of the Council of Jerusalem (Acts
15), through the 'creeds, councils and controversies' of the patristic period
(including the political as well as theological background), via the divergence
of West and East at the turn of the first millennium and the disastrous rivalries
of the dual papacy between Rome and Avignon in the fourteenth century, to the
Reformation (which is sadly where so many of our studies of Church history
begin and end). In the fourth chapter, he gives a workmanlike account of the
development of a distinctive Anglican polity, emerging from domination by
the English Crown (starting with the 13 colonies on the western seaboard of