This collection of essays arises out of an interdisciplinary conference in Florence in 2008. As its introduction points out, in recent years there has been an increasing reliance on courts for addressing questions of public policy and even political controversies. There may be good reasons for this, and this volume expands on those reasons, but the result has undeniably been a transfer of power on important social questions from democratically elected legislatures to judges in a court. When the judges in question are in a European court, in this case the European Court of Human Rights, the sense of remoteness and loss of democratic control can be even greater.

This issue of a ‘democratic deficit’ is never confronted in the collection, but a constant theme is the need to protect minorities from oppression and coercion by majorities. Indeed, the European Court is criticised by several contributors for its ‘margin of appreciation’, which can be seen as too respectful of majority arrangements in different countries, and for too unsympathetic a view of Muslim minorities, as evidenced by rulings about dress, the headscarf, the veil and so on. Although there are differences between the contributors there is also considerable overlap, and a lack of co-ordination, so that the same cases are discussed independently in several contributions. One example of the approach is given by Daniel Augenstein. He looks to a greater involvement of the European Court of Justice in human rights, not just adopting what he terms the ‘Strasbourg floor of human rights protection’ (p 276) but going further. He also looks to a ‘European supranationalism’ that could ‘reinterpret the relationship between national and religious diversities’ (p 278) within the framework and structure of the European Union. And he believes it to be vital that ‘the European member states accommodate religious diversity, rather than that religious minorities be assimilated to majoritarian national cultures’ (p 278). This clearly advances a general ideology of human rights. What it does to democracy, let alone the ‘margin of appreciation’, is ignored.

The crucial nature of the role of judges is illustrated by the Folgerø v Norway case at the European Court of Human Rights. Judgment was given by the Grand Chamber in 2007 with a majority of nine to eight. The case had far-reaching implications not only for the place of Christianity in Norwegian religious education but also, indirectly, for the constitutional position of the Church of Norway itself. The fact that the decision of only one judge could have such large effects raises questions about the role of judges in important constitutional and political issues, not least when they are situated outside the country concerned. One of the most balanced contributions to this collection is by the British Professor of Law Ian Leigh. His view is that in this case the ‘judgment of the majority of the Grand Chamber appears to excessively interfere in matters of national discretion’ (p 205).

It appears at times that some contributions are motivated, if not by an animus against religion in general, and Christianity in particular, then at least by a desire to drive religion out of the public sphere in the interests of treating all faiths equally, and of governmental neutrality. Even Robert Audi, the well-known American philosopher suggests that ‘the equality principle implies non-establishment as ordinarily understood’ (p 72). No religion should be privileged or given special recognition. In an interesting article that goes over ground he has regularly worked, he argues for his ‘principle of secular rationale’ (p 76). Arguments relying on religious assumptions alone should not be used in the public space. Coercion, in the shape of law, should not depend on religious reasons alone, as they cannot be allowed to justify on their own ‘coercion by law or public policy in democratic societies’ (p 88). His point is that all reasons used in such circumstances must appear compelling ‘to citizens who are as informed, and as rational, in the matter as oneself’ (p 70). In other words, if atheists will not accept one's arguments, the latter cannot justify law. There seems something curious about this argument, as democratic decision-making by its very nature produces results which informed, and rational, people can profoundly disagree with, but still find themselves in a minority. Searching for the level of agreement sought by Audi would induce total paralysis.

In other contributions the atheist assumptions of the later Enlightenment are explicitly spelled out. As portrayed by Susana Mancini and Michel Rosenfeld in their paper, these include a clear distinction between faith and reason (presumably to the detriment of faith), together with a commitment to entrusting the public sphere to the rule of reason. They amplify this later by wanting to demarcate faith and reason by drawing a line between what is amenable to ‘the methods of scientific inquiry or of empirical verification, on the one hand, and that which is not, such as religious beliefs or metaphysical convictions, on the other’ (p 184). This is all redolent of logical positivism. It is a philosophical approach that is highly controversial, and using it to divide faith and reason, and then to build distinctions between the public and private spheres, is, to put it kindly, ideologically charged.

While some pieces in this collection deal with well-known cases from the European Court of Human Rights, such as Folgerø, Lautsi v Italy and cases about the headscarf, other contributors are not lawyers but (like Robert Audi) are philosophers, social and political theorists, historians and so on. Apart from Audi, they seem to come from a variety of European backgrounds. The collection is instructive in so far as it shows many of the contributors having a vision of human rights protecting minorities, with little examination of the effects of this on the processes of democracy. A major criticism is that, without a list of who the contributors actually are, with their academic disciplines and countries of origin, one is left guessing just what assumptions and methods some of them are bringing to the discussion.