Belonging and Faith in Law

The Belonging and Faith in Law Research Stream is led by Professor Simon Lee.

Central issues in our understanding of citizenship and governance include our sense of belonging, the rule of law, and respect for fundamental rights in balancing equality and liberty.

Meet the team

This stream addresses such matters and has reached out from its base, the Law School, in the Faculty of Business and Law, and in this Citizenship and Governance Strategic Research Area to undertake multi-disciplinary research in collaborations across The Open University. For example, we proposed, and then Dr Olga Jurasz and Professor Simon Lee played a central role in curating, The Open University’s Year of ‘My-gration’, 250 daily blog posts throughout 2018, which indicated the range of interests in the OU and among our community partners, leading to further partnerships.

Our ‘Reflecting Space’ symposium was the first point of sustained encounter between our astrobiology team and researchers in the Law School and Business School. This led to the £6.7m grant from Research England to AstrobiologyOU to address the research question, ‘Are we alone in the Universe?’ This in turn led to the appointment of Dr Thomas Cheney in space governance, and to PhD studentships. The first fruits of this include a multi-authored article on planetary protection.

Researchers within this stream have addressed questions of belonging and governance in the UK in the wake of Brexit and during lockdown. Examples include essays on devolution, international law, our relationships with the European Union, belonging, and lockdown in the book Law in Motion edited by Dr Lisa Claydon, Dr Caroline Derry and Dr Marjan Ajevski.

We have attracted new researchers in this stream, such as Mark Hill QC, a leading practitioner and researcher in ecclesiastical law, law and religion, and freedom of religion areas which complement the research of Jessica Giles and Professor Simon Lee. 

First, there is the relationship between law and religion, which has become increasingly fraught. In different countries, there are widely differing views on the extent to which faiths and beliefs should be accommodated within legal systems. Some think there should be a special place for freedom of religion as of paramount significance. Some think it should just be one right among many. Some think that there is no place for special treatment for religions in modern societies. Even those who agree on one of these positions, however, can disagree strongly on what that should mean in practice. For example, should people of different faiths be allowed to wear religious symbols or clothing in the workplace?

Second, in many communities around the globe, there is a lack of confidence in the rule of law. In this sense, the ‘Faith in Law’ stream encourages critical research into the rule of law, its even-handedness in particular states and attitudes to it. In the UK, politicians often use ‘the rule of law’ in their lists of ‘British values’ but is there anything special about our legal systems?

Teaching

The law and religion work touches upon fundamental rights from a legal and philosophical perspective, it also encompasses work on the refugee crisis, bio-ethics, the work of the EU Special Envoy on Religious Freedom outside the EU. Researchers are collaborating with Dr Brian Grim and the Religious Freedom and Business Association. Students can benefit from legal skills development in the law and religion field (case note, case comment writing and mooting). Alumni and PhD students are able to work with Barrister and Law Lecturer Jessica Giles (associate editor) to publish work in the Oxford Journal of Law and Religion.

The law and religion work also looks at the place of fundamental rights within constitutional structures and how freedom of religion might be incorporated into post conflict societies. As such within the law school modules it relates to level 1, 2 and 3 undergraduate modules including:

Exploring Legal Boundaries is a research module where students can choose law and religion related topics to create a poster demonstrating their research ideas. At Masters degree level the research is linked to Business, human rights law and corporate social responsibility and The Law Dissertation. 

At an undergraduate level, the research on the scepticism about the rule of law relates to Law: Concepts and Perspectives and Public Law and Criminal Law (referred to above), with potential for students to author posters in Exploring Legal Boundaries on this topic if they choose to research in the area. Similarly on the Masters degree students can choose this as a topic upon which to author a dissertation.

The Tom Bingham Essay Prize is a directly related annual extra-curricular activity for OU law students.

Rt Hon the Lord Bingham of Cornhill

The Rt Hon the Lord Bingham of Cornhill (1933-2010) was a British barrister and judge (pictured). He served as Master of the Rolls, Lord Chief Justice and as Senior Lord of Appeal.  He had been described as ‘one of the world's most acute legal minds’. In 2011 his book The Rule of Law won the Orwell Prize for political writing.

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