Lawyers, both practitioners and academics, engage with legal history in a variety of ways. Increasing attention is being paid to legal regulation of history and memory. I argue that the interaction of law and history is particularly problematic within the context of a dispute with a religious element. I will use three case-studies to illustrate these challenges: (1) The repeal of the Fraudulent Mediums Act 1951 by the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008; (2) The Babri Masjid/Ram Temple dispute in Ayodhya, India; and (3) The Hindmarsh Island bridge controversy in South Australia; These case studies show the difficulties legal actors face when confronted with incompatible secular and sacred histories and diverse ways of ‘knowing history’, and the importance, nonetheless, of understanding history to understand law and religion.
Edge, Peter W.
School of Law
Year of publication: 2020Date of RADAR deposit: 2019-07-12
All rights reserved. This resource is the manuscript of a work accepted for publication in volume 56 of Studies in Church History. This manuscript may only be used for personal research and not further distributed.