Book Launch: Politicized Religion and the Reframing of Fundamental Rights

Hybrid Book Launch | Politicized Religion and the Reframing of Fundamental Rights

Speakers: Prof Susanna Mancini (University of Bologna, GCDC Sidney Distinguished Visitor), Prof Michel Rosenfeld (Cardozo School of Law)

Commentators: Prof Myriam Hunter-Henin (UCL Laws), Prof Lorenzo Zucca (Kings College London) and Dr Mara Malagodi (University of Warwick)

Chair: Prof Erin Delaney (UCL Laws)

Abstract

This event celebrates the launch of Politicized Religion and the Reframing of Fundamental Rights (Oxford University Press, 2026), co-authored by Susanna Mancini and Michel Rosenfeld.

About the Book

Politicized Religion and the Reframing of Fundamental Rights provides a systematic account of how recent politicization of religion has been used by proponents of illiberal nationalism and populism to reframe constitutional and human rights in exclusionary anti-pluralist ways. This reframing enhances the rights of those who belong to the majority religion or are steeped in its culture, at the expense of the rights of women, sexual minorities, and adherents to minority religions.

About the Speakers

Susanna Mancini (Ph.D., European University Institute, 1995; JD, University of Bologna, 1991) holds the Chair of Comparative Constitutional Law at the University of Bologna School of Law, and is a vice president of the International Association of Constitutional Law. She regularly teaches at the School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS Europe) of Johns Hopkins University. She has held several visiting professorship positions, including at Cardozo School of Law, Columbia Law School, Hebrew University and the University of Toulouse. She is interested in exploring how race and gender-related social and cultural constructs have shaped the balance of power and privilege in a liberal society, and in the role of the law in perpetuating and/or combating the marginalization of women and of racial, religious, sexual and  linguistic  minorities. Her work explores issue of law and religion, reproductive rights, the partnership of feminism and multiculturalism, self-determination and secession.

Michel Rosenfeld is University Professor of Law and Comparative Democracy, Justice Sydney L. Robins Professor of Human Rights, and Director of the Program on Global and Comparative Constitutional Theory at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law. He previously worked in private practice with major law firms.

He is the author and editor of numerous influential books on constitutional law, human rights, and legal theory, including Affirmative Action and Justice (1991) and A Pluralist Theory of Constitutional Justice (2022), with several works translated into multiple languages.

Rosenfeld has held prominent academic and leadership roles, including president of the International Association of Constitutional Law and editor-in-chief of the International Journal of Constitutional Law (2001–2014). He has held visiting professorships at leading institutions worldwide and received numerous honours, including France’s Legion of Honor.

About the commentators

Myriam Hunter-Henin is Professor of Comparative Law and Law & Religion at UCL Laws. Her research explores the interactions and tensions between law and religion, human rights, constitutional law, and democratic norms, with a focus on education, employment, and family law.

She earned law degrees in France and England and completed her PhD at Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne University on personal status, resulting in the monograph Pour une redéfinition du statut personnel (PUAM, 2004, Dennery Prize). She taught at Panthéon-Sorbonne before joining UCL, where she progressed from Lecturer to Professor (October 2021). She was invited to teach at LUISS (Rome, 2020), UCLouvain (2022), and delivered over 60 lectures at prestigious universities and institutions, including the French Conseil d’État.

Lorenzo Zucca is Professor in Law & Philosophy. He has studied and worked in Milan, Paris, Oxford, Florence and New York before moving to London. 

Lorenzo Zucca is Professor in Law & Philosophy. Lorenzo’s special interests span from human rights law and philosophy to constitutional theory, with a focus on the relation between Church and State. 

He’s now working on a project entitled ‘The Uncertainty of Will,’ which explores Shakespeare’s vision on the connection between power and knowledge and examines its psychological and philosophical insights on human cognition and human institutions. 

He is the author of Constitutional Dilemmas- Conflicts of Fundamental Legal Rights in Europe and the USA (OUP, 2007) and numerous articles on human rights law and theory. His second monograph is entitled A Secular Europe: Law and Religion in the European Constitutional Landscape (OUP 2012). This is a study of one of the most pressing problems in Europe and includes issues such as the protection of religious freedom, the limits of religious toleration, and a wider debate on European identity.

Dr Mara Malagodi is a Reader in Law at Warwick Law School, where she co-founded and co-directs the Centre for Constitutions in Context. She joined Warwick in 2022 from Hong Kong.

She is a comparative constitutional lawyer and socio-legal scholar with expertise in South Asian law and politics, human rights, gender and law, legal history, and law and film. She holds degrees from SOAS, University of London, and was a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow at the LSE. She is also a non-practising barrister (Middle Temple, Call 2016).

Alongside her academic work, she is an award-winning documentary filmmaker, with films screened at festivals including Raindance and Sheffield Doc/Fest.

Dr Malagodi is the author and editor of several books and volumes on constitutional law, including work on Nepalese and Asian constitutionalism. She is co-Editor-in-Chief of Constitutional Studies and serves on the executive committee of the UK Constitutional Law Association (UKCLA), as well as contributing to international legal networks and training programmes.

About the Chair

Erin F. Delaney is the Inaugural Director of the GCDC and the Leverhulme Professor of Comparative Constitutional Law.  Her scholarship explores constitutionalism in comparative perspective, with a particular focus on judicial legitimacy.  Her work on judicial power and judicial design addresses both the “countermajoritarian difficulty” of an unelected judiciary and the constitutional aspiration of limitations on majoritarian democracy.  For her article, The Federal Case for Judicial Review, about courts in federal systems, she was named the 2022 Federal Scholar in Residence at the Institution for Comparative Federalism (EURAC Research) in Italy, and she has held the Fulbright Visiting Research Chair in the Theory and Practice of Constitutionalism and Federalism at McGill University. Other areas of interest include the influence of Empire on the development and maintenance of democratic constitutionalism, as well as colonial and post-colonial constitutionalism more broadly.