Russell Sandberg: Religion, Law and Society
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-6478.2015.00719.x |
| Date | 01 September 2015 |
| Published date | 01 September 2015 |
Book Reviews
RELIGION, LAW AND SOCIETY by RUSSELL SANDBERG
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014, xii and 277 pp., £65.00)
Russell Sandberg is a prolific scholar in the area of law and religion. In this
book, his second monograph on the subject, he sets out a new agenda for the
burgeoning writing in the area of law and religion, arguing for a closer
engagement by legal academics with those writing about religion from the
perspective of sociology. Sandberg's book attempts both to show what in the
sociology of religion might be of interest to legal academics whilst, at the
same time, adding new arguments to debates about the development of
religious freedom in the United Kingdom.
Law and religion is now, as Sandberg argues, a sub-discipline within legal
studies with its own intellectual history. Equally the sociology of religion is a
sub-discipline within sociology. In the main, each has paid very little
attention to the other in the past. In the case of law and religion, this must in
part be due to the intellectual isolation that law as an academic area of study
long imposed on itself. It is now difficult to remember the degree of purity
that the doctrinal research method once insisted upon. Only questions that
could be answered from the internal evidence of judgments and statutes
could be asked within law schools. The faith was rigorously adhered to and
those who wished to ask different questions about law had to find a home
elsewhere in the academy. Such times are now past. Whilst many legal
academics still retain an interest in case law and statutes, few would limit
their analysis of them to a simple examination of the words of the judgment
or statute itself; their work is thus not doctrinal in the traditional sense.
Sandberg notes Cownie's research which showed the increasing preference
of legal academics for including insights, methods, and concepts taken from
disciplines outside law into their work. The recent overview report from the
Law Sub-panel for the 2014 REF observed the `notable trend' in legal
research to what it called `contextual approaches'. The times thus seem
propitious for the method of analysis that Sandberg is calling for.
Much of Sandberg's book is taken up with a detailed critique of various
approaches to the notion of the secularization of society in England and
Wales. His conclusion is that England and Wales are now a secularized, but
not a secular, society. Religion still has an influence on society, albeit a
diminishing one. The role of the churches that are part of their history has
lessened and, at the same time, there is little appreciation of the changing
place that religion has in some people's lives. Secularization, he contends, is
a major factor in the failure of law to protect religious rights; a narrow
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ß2015 The Author. Journal of Law and Society ß2015 Cardiff University Law School
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