Religious Law and Legal Systems Archives

“Takaful: The Legal Architecture of Islamic Insurance” by Jo Chitlik

Mar 20, 2026Canopy ForumEssaysAsia (Geography), Chitlik, Jo, Islam, March 2026, Religious Law and Legal Systems

Sunset over Pangkor Island, Malaysia (CC0 1.0). Insurance forms the foundation of modern economies, transforming uncertainty into manageable obligations, allocating risk, and stabilizing market. Yet conventional insurance, built on secular commercial frameworks, often clashes with Islamic legal and ethical norms. In many, Muslim-majority societies, however, conventional insurance has religious concerns. Classical jurisprudence prohibits riba (interest),…

“Justice Before Formality: Reframing Women’s Right to Maintenance in Pakistan” by Jo Chitlik

Jan 16, 2026Canopy ForumEssaysAsia (Geography), Chitlik, Jo, Human Rights / Civil Rights, January 2025, Religious Law and Legal Systems

Karakoram Mountains in Pakistan by King Elliot (CC BY-SA 4.0). Since its founding in 1947, Pakistan’s trajectory on women’s rights has been marked by a persistent tension between constitutional promises of equality and periods of legal ambiguity. The Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan affirms women’s equal status before the law, political participation, and…

“Endorsing with Caution: Jewish Law and the Politics of the Pulpit” by Michael J. Broyde

Dec 5, 2025Canopy ForumSeriesBroyde, Michael J., Judaism, November 2025, Religious Law and Legal Systems, Tax Law

View of the Grat Synagogue and the Portuguese Synagogue in Amsterdam by Gerrit Berckheyde (US-PD) This article is part of our series on Law, Religion, and The Johnson Amendment. If you’d like to explore other articles in this series, click here. American clergy have long navigated the seam between preaching values and practicing politics. The so‑called Johnson…

“Transformations and Persistences Between Law and Religion in the Italian Legal Science of the Modern Age” by Alarico Barbagli

Nov 19, 2025Canopy ForumEssaysBarbagli, Alarico, Christianity, Europe (Geography), November 2025, Religious Law and Legal Systems

Lady Justice at The Palace of Justice, Rome, Italy by Jebulon (CC0 1.0) Against the backdrop of the affirmation of the Modern State and the birth of national legal systems, the hundred years from the mid-sixteenth century to the mid-seventeenth century represent a period full of changes for Europe also in the legal field. As…

“AI Regulation and the Risk of Ideological Capture: When Tech Becomes Religion” by Isaac May

Oct 27, 2025Canopy ForumEssaysMay, Isaac, North America (Geography), October 2025, Religious Law and Legal Systems

Nature (AI) by Alan Warburton (CC BY 4.0). In 2014, users on LessWrong, an internet forum, encountered a post by a user named Roko, who posited that humanity would invent a superintelligence. This superintelligence would have the power to create fully accurate computerized simulations of people, essentially ending death. The AI, knowing that its creation…

“Jewish Law Meets International Law” by Michael J. Broyde and Yehonatan Elazar-De Mota

Mar 28, 2025Canopy ForumLiterature HighlightsBroyde, Michael J., Elazar-De Mota, Yehonatan, Judaism, March 2025, Religious Law and Legal Systems

Jewish Law Meets International LawMichael J. Broyde and Yehonatán Elazar-De Mota The following is an introduction to Michael J. Broyde and Yehonatán Elazar-De Mota’s new book, Jewish Law and International Law: Sovereignty and Exogenous Authority in a Transnational World (Oxford, 2025). In today’s interconnected world, legal traditions are constantly interacting across borders. Nations craft treaties…

“Boiling a Kid in its Mother’s Milk: Norms and Interpretations of Kashrut” by Atid Malka

Mar 7, 2025Canopy ForumEssaysJudaism, Malka, Atid, March 2025, North America (Geography), Religious Law and Legal Systems

Baby Goats Resting on the Road by Amaury Laporte (CC BY-SA 2.0). If anyone unfamiliar with Judaism were to be introduced to the concept of a kosher kitchen for the first time, they would likely raise questions. Why does the family have different dishes and cutlery for meat and dairy foods? While that may be…

“Open Marriages: A Jewish Couple’s Solution?” by Atid Malka

Feb 27, 2025Canopy ForumEssaysFebruary 2025, Judaism, Malka, Atid, North America (Geography), Religious Law and Legal Systems

Jewish Wedding by Wincenty Smokowski (1858, US-PD). Throughout the Pentateuch and subsequently in the books of the Prophets and Writings, readers are confronted with the existence of polygamous relationships – Abraham, Jacob, David, and Solomon, to name a mere few – but as of the eleventh century CE, Jewish men have been prohibited from taking…

“Limited Dominion in Early Modern Political Theologies” by Elisabeth Rain Kincaid and Matthew P. Cavedon

Jan 23, 2025Canopy ForumEssaysCavedon, Matthew P., Christianity, History, Kincaid, Elisabeth Rain, Religious Law and Legal Systems

Image by David Vives from Pixabay. American politics have taken increasingly surprising turns in recent years. One of the more surprising of these has been the recovery of a nineteenth-century Catholic political theory known as integralism. Its proponents reject secular governance and free institutions (lower-case “l” liberalism) in favor of “political rule that must order…

“The Muslim Family Law Reform: Exploring Cross-National and Historical Differences” by Yüksel Sezgin

Oct 9, 2024Canopy ForumEssaysFamily Law, Islam, October 2024, Religious Law and Legal Systems, Sezgin, Yüksel

Illustration commissioned for this project by Tahira Rifath Fifty-three nations (35 Muslim-majority, 18 Muslim-minority) formally integrate shari‘a-based Muslim Family Laws (MFLs) into their domestic legal systems and enforce them through state-run (religious or civil) courts adjudicating familial disputes among their Muslim citizens. State-enforced MFLs often violate people’s fundamental rights and liberties. For example, in many…