IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/zbw/wzbdsc/spiv2009201.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Das Kopftuch im Streit zwischen Parlamenten und Gerichten: Ein Drama in drei Akten

Author

Listed:
  • Henkes, Christian
  • Kneip, Sascha

Abstract

The ruling by the German Constitutional Court in the famous “Ludin” headscarf case permits the federal states (Bundesländer) to rearrange the treatment of religious symbols in public space (i.e. schools) and to adjust the complex relationship between state and religion in Germany. Based on a qualitative content analysis, the study at hand examines the arguments presented by different political and legal actors and displays the results of the legislative and judicial processes regarding the headscarf issue in Germany. Three major results are worthwhile to be highlighted: First of all, parties make a difference. Whether the headscarf for schoolteachers is forbidden or not depends on which party is in government. Because of the huge differences in the parties’ programmatic views regarding religion policies, it makes a difference whether the Christian (CDU) or the Social Democrats (SPD) are in power. Secondly, an unequal treatment of religions is non-enforceable under the settings of a liberal democracy. German courts prevented the CDU’s attempts to implement such unequal treatment. As an unintended consequence, the state-religion-paradigm in Germany has shifted from “open neutrality” to a more laicist model – at least in those federal states where an unequal treatment was attempted. Thirdly, this dealing with the headscarf issue by some political actors reveals that, in modern (heterogeneous) democratic societies, an efficient system of rule of law and judicial review is essential if citizens (and their religions) shall be truly treated as equals.

Suggested Citation

  • Henkes, Christian & Kneip, Sascha, 2009. "Das Kopftuch im Streit zwischen Parlamenten und Gerichten: Ein Drama in drei Akten," Discussion Papers, Research Unit: Democracy and Democratization SP IV 2009-201, WZB Berlin Social Science Center.
  • Handle: RePEc:zbw:wzbdsc:spiv2009201
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/49728/1/614428858.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:zbw:wzbdsc:spiv2009201. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/wzbbbde.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.