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

宗教法律制度已经成为法律部门研究的一部分。在宗教团体希望在世俗国家内应用其宗教法的情况下，有必要处理宗教法。正统的犹太人和穆斯林把宗教法律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庭。因此，必须证明宗教法是否符合宪法的范围，以及宗教法庭如何在民主国家的限制内运作。在德国，没有相关规定，但法律界对此的关注有所增加，尤其是对穆斯林少数民族的关注。本研究的主要目标是在教条和实践层面上对世俗国家的宗教法院进行定性实证调查，以表明宗教法如何被纳入世俗法律体系。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，我选择了社会学的方法，考察了美国的拉比法庭和加拿大的伊斯兰教法法庭。我想研究一下程序方面和宪法的整合来看看是否存在与世俗国家的冲突以及这种整合是否对双方都有效世俗国家和宗教团体。美国的拉比法庭是一个很好的研究对象，因为拉比法庭的实践在美国是很好的建立和接受的。对于伊斯兰法，我将研究美国和加拿大穆斯林社区的情况。特别是加拿大的案例很有趣，因为2005年有一场激烈的政治辩论导致了法院地位的改变。本文的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.