Diritto Pubblico Comparato ed Europeo

Sommario

1. Le coordinate complessive della questione. – 2. Elementi del paradosso britannico. – 3. Risvolti costituzionali dell’establishment della Chiesa d’Inghilterra. – 4. Una Costituzione storica costruita sull’intolleranza. – 5. La via verso la modernità. – 6. Diritti religiosi e libertà di manifestazione del pensiero. – 7. Multiculturalità e questioni della non discriminazione. – 8. A proposito di una certa clausola del Serious Organized Crime and Police Bill.

Abstract

Among the fundamentals of the English (later UK) Constitution a sharp form of religious intolerance towards the Roman Catholics and a straight connection between Church and State were fully scheduled at the end of the XVII century, when the struggle between the parliamentary system and the absolutist kings was put to an end. That’s why we can reasonably emphasize that the unwritten constitutional system coming up from the Glorious Revolution was wholly built on religious discrimination, as it is widely witnessed by the peculiar position of the Established Church of England and the favour to other Protestant denominations. By the way, a spirit of religious pluralism and of understatement towards religious disputes was the prevailing feature of the age of Liberalism. The end of the Empire and the XX-century decolonization waves, by trasferring the plurality of ethnic groups and religious denominations from the Commonwealth world to the British mainland, is compelling now the United Kingdom to face the multicultural structure of society and design new solutions in human rights protection, in non-discrimination and in the implementation of the European Convention on Human Rights in the light of religious and belief standings. Once grounded on a sort of institutionalized intolerance, the British constitutional system is becoming an advanced system where “multicultural” religious rights are openly accepted.