The capacity of the secular state for religious law -A qualitative empirical research of the integration of religious based legal proceedings in a democratic state with reference to the USA and Canada

宗教法律的体系已经是法律的部门研究的一部分。如果宗教团体希望在世俗国家内适用其宗教法，则需要处理宗教法。正统犹太教和穆斯林将宗教法理解为他们信仰的组成部分。他们可能会寻找可以审理宗教案件的法院。因此，必须证明宗教法是否符合宪法的范围，以及宗教法院如何在民主国家的限制下运作。在德国，没有任何规定，但在法律的学术界，特别是在穆斯林少数民族方面，对宗教法的关注略有上升，本研究的主要目标是对世俗国家的宗教法院在教条和实践层面进行定性的实证调查，以表明宗教法如何能够纳入世俗的法律的体系。调查是第二步的先决条件，在第二步中，我将研究德国法律如何纳入宗教法。在这个项目中，我选择了一种社会学的方法，通过观察美国的犹太教法庭和加拿大的伊斯兰教法庭。我想检查程序方面和宪法的整合，以看看是否有与世俗国家的冲突，如果这样的整合工程双方世俗国家和宗教社区。美国的犹太教法庭是一个很好的研究对象，因为犹太教法庭的做法在美国已经得到了很好的确立和接受。对于伊斯兰法，我将研究美国和加拿大穆斯林社区的情况。特别是，加拿大的情况是有趣的，因为有一个充满活力的政治辩论，导致法院的地位在2005年的变化。这一实证研究可作为在德国法律背景下处理宗教法问题的参考。

Religious legal systems are already part of research in legal departments. There is a need to deal with religious law in cases where religious communities want to apply their religious law within the secular state. Orthodox jews and muslims understand religious law as a constituent for their belief. They might look for courts where religious cases can be tried. Therefore, it has to be proved whether religious law fits into the realm of constitutional law and how religious courts could operate within the limitations of a democratic state. In Germany there is no regulation but there is a slight rise of attention in the legal academy for it, especially with regard to muslim minorities.The main goal of this research is a qualitative empirical inquiry of religious courts in secular states on the dogmatic and the practical level in order to show how religious law can be incorporated in a secular legal system. The inquiry is a prerequisite for the second step in which I will examine how German law could incorporate religious law. For the project I chose a sociological approach by looking at a rabbinical court in the U.S. and a sharia court in Canada. I want to examine the procedural aspects and the constitutional integration in order to see if there are conflicts with the secular state and if such an integration works for both sides the secular state and the religious community. A rabbinical court in the U.S. turns out to be a good research object because the practice of rabbinical courts is well established and accepted in the U.S. For islamic law I will examine the situation of muslim communities in the US and Canada. Especially, the Canada case is interesting because there is an energetic political debate which led to a change of the court status in 2005. The empirical study should serve as a reference for dealing with religious law in the context of German law.