Abstract
The chapter reviews aspects of the work of one of Germany’s foremost legal scholars in the post-war era: Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde (1930–2019), who served as professor of law and as judge on Germany’s Federal Constitutional Court. He contributed like few others to discussions about the central normative frameworks of post-war German constitutional democracy, the relations between state and society, and the role of religion in democracy. Unlike Jürgen Habermas, he did not believe that participation in shared democratic processes was sufficient to create cohesion and a “we-consciousness” among the citizenry. Instead, he insisted that society had to also continuously work towards creating and sustaining a shared democratic culture so that agreement could be reached on the things that lie beyond the ballot box. The chapter reviews Böckenförde’s democratic theory, which evolved significantly out of his criticism of the Catholic Church’s views on democracy prior to the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965). It also compares his views on democratic models of secularism with those of Indian theorist Rajeev Bhargava’s to suggest that, in the final analysis, differences between the two thinkers stem to no small extent from the fact that Böckenförde, unlike Bhargava, is a theorist of freedom more than belonging.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
That not only India but also Germany should be thought of as bearing features of transformative constitutionalism is argued by Hailbronner (2017).
- 2.
These concepts include “chain of legitimation”, the constitution as an “ordering frame” (Rahmenordnung), and “gateway concepts”, among others. Reflective of his ability to coin concepts for wide societal use, Bӧckenfӧrde was only the second legal scholar ever awarded the Sigmund Freud Prize for excellence in academic prose.
- 3.
- 4.
Hochland was a Catholic cultural magazine which published contributions by authors regardless of their denomination and was viewed sceptically by the Catholic Church for its independence, critical spirit, and anti-denominationalism.
- 5.
Despite his lack of sojourns abroad, his works have been translated widely, inter alia into Italian, Polish, Japanese, Korean, and English, as well as to a lesser extent into French, Portuguese, Spanish, Czech, Slovenian, Russian, and Swedish. For an overview of these translations and their reception, see Künkler and Stein (2020b). During his trip to Pakistan, the German Embassy organized for him to deliver a lecture at a Pakistani Research Institute, comparing German and Pakistani Federalism.
- 6.
Böckenförde (1958).
- 7.
Böckenförde (1961).
- 8.
To become eligible for a professorship in Germany, it used to be the case that an applicant needed to have a doctorate and a second major work, usually in the same discipline, i.e., the habilitation (combined with the venia legendi, the authorization to teach the subject at the university level). Nowadays a second book is widely regarded as equivalent to the formal habilitation, although many scholars still seek the formal acquisition of a habilitation as well. To have two doctorates like Böckenförde is rather unusual and testifies to his broad intellectual interests.
- 9.
Böckenförde (1964).
- 10.
Joachim Ritter, professor in Münster, was one of the most influential German philosophers of the post-war period, who edited the “Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie”, a standard work in the discipline of philosophy.
- 11.
‘Normativismus’ in: Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie, edited by Joachim Ritter and Karlfried Gründer, Vol. 6. (Basel/Stuttgart: Schwabe 1984), Sp. 931 f.; Ordnungsdenken, konkretes. In ibid, Sp. 1311–13; (Böckenförde 1993).
- 12.
Ernst Forsthoff (1902–74) was a German scholar of constitutional and administrative law, teaching over the course of his career at the universities of Frankfurt am Main, Hamburg, Königsberg, Vienna, and Heidelberg. Like Carl Schmitt (Forsthoff’s mentor) and many other German legal scholars, he welcomed the Third Reich and worked on an ideological justification of the totalitarian state. But unlike most other legal scholars, Forsthoff distanced himself from the regime still during the Nazi period and was banned from teaching in 1942. Unlike Carl Schmitt, he was ultimately permitted to resume teaching in the Federal Republic and returned to his professorship at the University of Heidelberg in 1952. Forsthoff was a leading author of the Constitution of Cyprus and served as the president of the Supreme Constitutional Court of Cyprus from 1960 to 1963.
- 13.
Buve (1967).
- 14.
Brunner et al. (1978).
- 15.
The German court system has three main categories of courts: ordinary, specialized and constitutional courts. Ordinary courts deal with criminal and most civil cases. They are organized in four tiers from the municipal to the regional, Länder and federal level, where the Federal Court of Justice (Bundesgerichtshof) is the court of final appeal. The specialized courts are subdivided into five legal fields: administrative, labour, social, fiscal, and patent law. With the exception of the patent and finance courts that operate only at one level and two levels, respectively, the specialized courts are organized hierarchically on three tiers: on a local, a Länder, and a federal tier. Issues at stake in administrative cases are government policies that may harm the legal interests of individuals, for instance plans for land use that infringe on property owners’ rights. Labour cases deal with relations between employees and employers. Finally, social courts deal with cases relating to the welfare state and its system of social insurance. A constitutional court exists in each of the sixteen Länder (with different designations) and on the federal level with the Federal Constitutional Court.
- 16.
He was an advisor to the executive committee of German Catholics, the most important institution of lay Catholicism in Germany. Its tasks include organizing the biennial Catholic Kirchentag (church day), discussing pending issues with the German conference of bishops, and representing lay Catholicism in public. He was also one of the founding members of Donum Vitae, a Catholic organization offering prenatal consultancy, including to those planning to undertake an abortion. Such prenatal consultancy is mandatory for those wishing to undertake an abortion (which has been de-criminalized for the first trimester). The creation of Donum Vitae caused a serious conflict with the Vatican, which accuses the organization of indirectly enabling the state’s legally tolerated abortion regime.
- 17.
Böckenförde (2017, Chapter 17, p. 386).
- 18.
Böckenförde (2017, Chapter 3, p. 100).
- 19.
In two of his dissenting opinions, his social-democratic leanings come particularly to the fore. One was his take on party financing, where he argued that a law that made donations to political parties deductible for juridical persons, including corporations, violated the equality principle of the Basic Law’s Article 3, as would deductible donations by natural persons at a level exceeding the median income. He also dissented in the case regarding the net wealth tax where the majority had ruled that the fundamental right to property, in connection with other basic rights, imposed a general upper limit on taxation. In the majority’s view, the cumulative burden of all income and net wealth taxes must not exceed fifty percent of net imputed earnings. Although he strongly defended the right to property otherwise, Böckenförde did not subscribe to the view of a constitutionally mandated upper limit on taxation. In his academic writings, Böckenförde explicitly and implicitly lamented that Article 14 (2) Basic Law, according to which “property entails obligations; its use shall also serve the public good” did not find sufficient reflection in the public regulation of private property.
- 20.
The Festschrifts are Grawert (1995), Wahl and Wieland (2002), Enders and Masing (2006), Masing and Wieland (2011). The edited volumes are Große Kracht and Große Kracht (2014), Mehring and Otto (2014). The monographs are Manterfeld (2000), Falk (2006), Pavelka (2015). Apart from numerous obituaries that were published following his passing in February 2019, the Verfassungsblog in May 2019 convened a review with ten commentaries on Böckenförde’s legacy.
- 21.
Böckenförde received honorary doctorates from the Law Schools of the Universities of Basel (1987), Bielefeld (1999), and Münster (2001), and from the Faculties of Catholic Theology of Bochum University (1999), and Tübingen University (2005). In 1970 he became a member of the North-Rhine Westphalian Academy of Sciences and in 1989 corresponding member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities. He has received the Reuchlin Award of the City of Pforzheim for outstanding work in the humanities (1978), the order of merit of the state of Baden-Württemberg (2003), the Guardini Award of the Catholic Academy in Bavaria for work in the field of the philosophy of religion (2004), the Hannah-Arendt Prize for Political Thought (2004), the Sigmund Freud Prize for scholarly prose (2012), and the Grand Cross of Merit (2016), one of the highest tributes the Federal Republic of Germany can pay to individuals for services to the nation. Böckenförde was Knight Commander of the Pontifical Equestrian Order of St. Gregory appointed by John Paul II. (1999).
- 22.
- 23.
Böckenförde (1958). His critique was further expanded in an article co-authored with Robert Spaemann “Die Zerstörung der naturrechtlichen Kriegslehre. Erwiderung an P. Gustav Gundlach SJ.” In: Atomare Kampfmittel und christliche Ethik. Diskussionsbeiträge deutscher Katholiken. München: Kösel, 1960, 161–196. Böckenförde and Spaemann reacted to the influential Catholic social theorist Gustav Gundlach who suggested that the idea of a nuclear war could be justified by Catholic just war theory if such a war was waged to protect a Catholic state. Böckenförde and Spaemann rejected this claim and suggested moreover that the contemporary NATO strategy of massive retaliation contradicted Christian teachings on just war. The ensuing discussion was of particular acuity as the nuclear armament of the Bundeswehr was being considered in the Bundestag at the time. The two young scholars elucidated that according to Catholic teachings, a Catholic soldier could not in good conscience execute any order given in connection with the deployment of nuclear weapons. The exchange caused an uproar both inside the German Catholic church and the German military establishment, and Böckenförde recalls being branded a “lefty” in the context of the debate. Due to the careful argumentation of Böckenförde and Spaemann, however, Gundlach’s position was ultimately no longer tenable and he himself ceased making the argument, though he never recanted it.
- 24.
- 25.
- 26.
My “undertaking […] was initially accompanied more by criticism than approval—let me recall merely the medium-size earthquake that my essay about German Catholicism in 1933 caused among the Catholic-ecclesiastical public. A change in the direction toward respect and in part—though at first still hesitant—approval came with the various contributions on religious freedom, the first of which was written during the debates of the Vatican Council [“Religionsfreiheit als Aufgabe der Christen,” 1965], and those dealing with the political mandate of the Church [1969, 1973, 1980/84, 1983]. Eventually there were discussions as between equals, coupled with growing recognition by the discipline of theology.” See Böckenförde (2020, Chapter 11).
- 27.
This major occupation as an inner-Catholic Critic also applies to his 1967 article on the rise of the state as a process of secularization. Jan-Werner Müller lays this out in great detail in (2018).
- 28.
The ‘Kulturkampf’ (culture war) was a struggle of Chancellor Bismarck’s government against the Catholic Church concerning the role and power of Catholic institutions in predominantly Protestant Prussia. Bismarck enacted a series of anti-Catholic laws, including the disbanding of Catholic organizations, confiscation of church property, and banishment or imprisonment of clergy. The Kulturkampf was in the long term unsuccessful and the discriminating laws were eventually repealed. However, the term was still used in the Weimar Republic to refer to (factual or putative) discrimination of Catholics, and the example of the resistance exhibited by the Catholic Church during the Kulturkampf was invoked later to ask why it had done so little to resist its suppression by the Nazi regime.
- 29.
Böckenförde recalled in 2009: “[In preparation of writing the 1961 article] I sat in the archive [of the Swiss Catholic journal Ecclesiastica]. There I came across some things. At first, I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. It became surprisingly clear to me that these were exactly the positions that I had fundamentally criticized in my [1957] democracy essay. […] That is also why I structured the [1961] essay as a case study, in order to spell out and reinforce that the traditional theory of [natural law of] the Church was untenable. [My essay] was not supposed to be only a historical account, but a case study in order to demonstrate something theoretically and systematically by way of historical events.” See (Böckenförde 2020), biographical interview.
- 30.
Künkler and Stein (2017a).
- 31.
Böckenförde (2020), biographical interview.
- 32.
The Second Vatican Council (Vatican II) fundamentally redefined the Church’s doctrinal position in a number of areas, notably on the issue of religious freedom. As late as 1886, Pope Leo XIII had reaffirmed that only a state based on the Christian faith was truly legitimate and that religious liberty and freedom of conscience were illegitimate deviations from Christian natural law (encyclical “Immortale Dei”). By contrast, in the encyclical “Dignitatis humanae”, the Second Vatican Council declared its acceptance of the religiously neutral state.
- 33.
“A maxim of law applies by its nature universally, not only for me, but also against me. A legal principle that seeks to exclude this mutuality is not a legal principle but a power principle.” Böckenförde (2020, Chapter 4).
- 34.
Hegel (1959).
- 35.
Böckenförde (2017).
- 36.
Böckenförde (2020).
- 37.
“It is not the state that must prescribe and make obligatory a way of life; on the contrary, [the democratic state] must be sustained by basic attitudes within society.” Böckenförde (2017, p. 384).
- 38.
Böckenförde (2009).
- 39.
See Böckenförde (2020). Böckenförde also explained that when religious groups had in the past used the democratic process to promote their own worldviews, this had been at the expense of the quality and longevity of democracy. “The inner strength of a democratic state depends more on the democratic loyalty which different political groups have to each other than on the realization of certain demands of natural law.” Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde (1973), here p. 102.
- 40.
Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde, “Noch einmal: Das Ethos der modernen Demokratie,” in: Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde, Kirche und Christlicher Glaube in den Herausforderungen der Zeit, 41.
- 41.
See Ralf Dahrendorf (1992). Freiheit und Soziale Bindungen. Anmerkungen zur Struktur einer Argumentation.: In: Krzysztof Michalski, Die liberale Gesellschaft. Castelgandolfo-Gespräche 1992, Klett Cotta. Earlier in his career, Böckenförde had, like Hermann Heller, referred to this as societal (or relative) homogeneity, but due to the multiple misunderstandings this created, later shifted to the terms “we-consciousness” and “sense of belonging”.
- 42.
- 43.
See Künkler and Stein (2018f).
- 44.
- 45.
Alfred Stepan’s model of the “Twin Tolerations” is largely congruent with this view, but in Böckenförde the legal manifestations of this relation between religion and state are thought out in much greater detail. Alfred C. Stepan (2001).
- 46.
- 47.
Böckenförde (2020, Chapter 8).
- 48.
Manent (2018).
- 49.
Sacksofsky (2018).
- 50.
See Böckenförde (2020, Chapter 11). Distinguishing the swearing-in as professor from that of the constitutional judge (both civil service positions), he comments in the biographical interview (chapter 16 in the same volume) “[as constitutional court judge I swore with religious affirmation] [b]ecause I believe that especially this entirely independent and unchecked office depends on the morality of the individuals who exercise it. That is why I consider it legitimate that the religiously neutral state in this case lays claim to a person’s inner powers of commitment, even if this is formally voluntary. The oath for regular civil service positions does not have this specific meaning. That is also why I left out the religious affirmation when I was sworn in as a professor.”.
- 51.
For further details on the implications of this position, see Künkler and Stein (2020c).
- 52.
Upon closer examination, the model which Bhargava describes as the Western model appears to apply to the model of the United States predominantly, as most other Western states in fact have not erected a “wall of separation” between religion and state. The famous formulation stems from the 1947 US Supreme Court ruling Everson vs Board of Education. Incidentally, since the 1990s numerous judgments have chipped away at this “wall,” so that today the model does not even apply to the United States of America anymore. Some observers characterize the current model of religion-state relations rather as one of equal liberty.
- 53.
Bhargava (2011).
- 54.
Bhargava (2006). Bhargava identifies different numbers of pillars in different writings on the Principled Distance Model. Sometimes, he lists as a separate pillar the provision of exemptions for religious organizations that these receive through special clauses in legislation or in court judgments. Since exemptions are nearly universal to all models of religion-state relations, we do not regard these as particular to the Principled Distance Model and do not discuss them here.
- 55.
Berman et al. (2013, p. 84).
- 56.
Böckenförde (2009).
- 57.
Bhargava (2016).
- 58.
Ibid, p. 172.
- 59.
- 60.
Böckenförde (2020, Chapter 13).
- 61.
On differential burdening and models of secularism, see Künkler and Shankar (2018).
- 62.
Eisgruber and Sager (2010).
- 63.
References
Berman, B. J., Bhargava, R., & Laliberté, A. (Eds.). (2013). Secular states and religious diversity. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press.
Bhargava, R. (2006). The distinctiveness of Indian Secularism. In T. N. Srinivasan (Ed.), The future of secularism (pp. 20–53), Oxford University Press.
Bhargava, R. (2011). States, religious diversity, and the crisis of secularism. In OpenDemocracy. Retrieved March 22, 2011, from http://www.opendemocracy.net/rajeev-bhargava/states-religious-diversity-and-crisis-of-secularism-0.
Bhargava, R. (2016). Is European secularism secular enough? In Jean Cohen & Cécile Laborde (Eds.), Religion, secularism, and constitutional democracy (pp. 157–181). New York: Columbia University Press.
Böckenförde, E.-W. (1957). Das Ethos der modernen Demokratie und die Kirche. Hochland, 50(1), 4–19.
Böckenförde, E.-W. (1958). Noch einmal: Das Ethos der modernen Demokratie. Hochland, 50(5), 409–421.
Böckenförde, E.-W. (1961). German Catholicism in 1933. Cross Currents, 11, 283–304.
Böckenförde, E.-W. (1964). Die Organisationsgewalt im Bereich der Regierung. Eine Untersuchung zum Staatsrecht der Bundesrepublik Deutschland. Berlin: Duncker & Humblot.
Böckenförde, E.-W. (1964/1965). Religionsfreiheit als Aufgabe der Christen. Gedanken eines Juristen zu den Diskussionen auf dem Zweiten Vatikanischen Konzil. In Stimmen der Zeit, 90(9), 199–212.
Böckenförde, E.-W. (1970). The Basic Right of Freedom of Conscience. In Böckenförde, E.-W. (2020). Religion, Law, and Democracy: Selected Writings. M. Künkler, & T. Stein (Eds.). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Böckenförde, E.-W. (1973). Kirchliches Naturrecht und politisches Handeln. In F. Böckle & E.-W. Böckenförde (Eds.), Naturrecht in der Kritik (pp. 96–125). Mainz: Matthias-Grünewald-Verlag.
Böckenförde, E.-W. (1978). Der Staat als sittlicher Staat. Berlin: Duncker & Humblot.
Böckenförde, E.-W. (1981). Ethische und politische Grundsatzfragen zur Zeit. In Herder Korrespondenz, Heft 7, Juli 1981, pp. 342–348.
Böckenförde, E.-W. (1988). Schriften zu Staat, Gesellschaft, Kirche, Bd. I: Der deutsche Katholizismus im Jahre 1933. Kirche und demokratisches Ethos. Freiburg: Herder Verlag.
Böckenförde, E.-W. (1993). Rechtsstaat. In J. Ritter, & K. Gründer (Eds.), Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie (Bd. 8, pp. 332–342). Basel/Stuttgart: Schwabe.
Böckenförde, E.-W. (1995). Staatliches Recht und sittliche Ordnung. In H. Fechtrup, F. Schulze, T. Sternberg (Eds.), Aufklärung durch Tradition. Symposion der Josef Pieper Stiftung zum 90. Geburtstag von Josef Pieper (pp. 87–107). Münster: LiT-Verlag.
Böckenförde, E.-W. (2001). Recht, Sittlichkeit, Toleranz. Ulm: Humboldt Studienzentrum.
Böckenförde, E.-W. (2003). Die Würde des Menschen war unantastbar. In Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), 204, 03.09.2003, (pp. 33–35).
Böckenförde, E.-W. (2007a). Bekenntnisfreiheit in einer pluralen Gesellschaft. In Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde: Kirche und christlicher Glaube in den Herausforderungen der Zeit. Beiträge zur politisch-theologischen Verfassungsgeschichte 1957–2002, 2nd ed. LiT-Verlag.
Böckenförde, E.-W. (2007b). Der säkularisierte Staat. Sein Charakter, seine Rechtfertigung und seine Probleme im 21. Jahrhundert, Munich: C.F. v. Siemens Stiftung.
Böckenförde, E.-W. (2009). Freiheit ist ansteckend. die tageszeitung, p. 4.
Böckenförde, E.-W. (2010). Vom Ethos der Juristen. Berlin: Duncker & Humblot.
Böckenförde, E.-W. (2017). Constitutional and Political Theory: Selected Writings. M. Künkler, & T. Stein (Eds.), Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Böckenförde, E.-W. (2020). Religion, Law, and Democracy: Selected Writings. M. Künkler, & T. Stein (Eds.). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Brunner, O., Conze, W., & Koselleck, R. (1978). Organ, Organismus, Organisation, politischer Körper. In Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe. Historisches Lexikon zur politisch-sozialen Sprache in Deutschland (Vol. 4, pp. 561–622). Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta.
Buve, S., (Ed.). (1967). Säkularisation und Utopie; Ernst Forsthoff zum 65. Geburtstag. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, Series: Ebracher Studien.
Eisgruber, C. L., & Sager L. G. (2010). Religious Freedom and the Constitution, Harvard University Press.
Enders, C., & Masing, J., (Eds.). (2006). Freiheit des Subjekts und Organisation von Herrschaft. Symposium zu Ehren von Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde anlässlich seines 75. Geburtstages (Der Staat, Beiheft 17). Berlin: Duncker & Humblot.
Falk, J. (2006). Freiheit als politisches Ziel. Grundmodelle liberalen Denkens bei Kant, Hayek und Böckenförde. Frankfurt a. M.: Campus.
Grawert, R. (Ed.). (1995). Offene Staatlichkeit: Festschrift für Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde zum 65. Geburtstag, Berlin: Duncker & Humblot.
Große Kracht, H.-J., & Große Kracht, K. (Eds.). (2014). Religion - Recht - Republik. Studien zu Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde. Paderborn: Schöningh.
Hailbronner, M. (2017). Transformative Constitutionalism: Not only in the global South. American Journal of Comparative Law, 65(3), 527–565.
Hegel, G. W. F. (1959). Vorlesungen zur Philosophie der Religion [1821–31] (Vol. 2, p. 2017). Stuttgart: Glockner.
Heller, H. (1992 [1928]). Politische Demokratie und soziale Homogenität. In Hermann H. (Ed.), Gesammelte Werke, 2nd edn. (Vol. II, pp. 421–433). Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck.
Künkler, M., & Shankar, S. (2018). Introduction: A Secular Age beyond the West. In M. Künkler, & J. Madeley, S. Shankar (Eds.), A Secular Age beyond the West. Religion, Law and the State in Asia, the Middle East and North Africa (pp. 1–32) Cambridge University Press.
Künkler, M., & Stein, T. (2017a). State, Law, and Constitution: Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde’s Political and Legal Thought in Context. In Böckenförde, E.-W. (2017). Constitutional and Political Theory: Selected Writings (pp. 1–35). M. Künkler, & T. Stein (Eds.), Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Künkler, M., & Stein, T. (2017b). Böckenförde’s Political Theory of the State. In Böckenförde, E.-W. (2017). Constitutional and Political Theory: Selected Writings (pp. 38–53). M. Künkler, & T. Stein (Eds.), Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Künkler, M., & Stein, T. (Eds.). (2018a). Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde on Law and Religion. Oxford Journal of Law and Religion, 7(1), 1–123.
Künkler, M., & Stein, T. (2018b). Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde: Inner-Catholic Critic and Advocate of Open Neutrality. Oxford Journal of Law and Religion, 7(1), 1–12.
Künkler, M., & Stein T. (Eds.). (2018c). Statism, Secularism, Liberalism–Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde beyond German Law. German Law Journal, 19(2), 137–460.
Künkler, M., & Stein T. (2018d). Statism, Secularism, Liberalism–Böckenförde’s Contributions to German Staatsrechtslehre in the Light of Contemporary Challenges within and beyond the State. German Law Journal, 19(2), 137–160.
Künkler, M., & Stein, T. (Eds.). (2018e). Democratic Pluralism, Social Cohesion and Individual Ethos in the Secularized State—the Political Thought of Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde. Constellations. An International Journal of Critical and Democratic Theory, 25(2), 181–241.
Künkler, M., & Stein, T. (2018f). Carl Schmitt in Ernst‐Wolfgang Böckenförde’s work: Carrying Weimar constitutional theory into the Bonn Republic. Constellations: An International Journal of Critical and Democratic Theory, 25(2), 225–241.
Künkler, M., & Stein, T. (Eds.). (2020a). Die Rezeption der Werke Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenfördes in international vergleichender Perspektive, Beihefte zu “Der Staat”, Band 24, Duncker & Humblot (pp. 5–267).
Künkler, M., & Stein, T. (2020b). Die Rezeption Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenfördes in international vergleichender Perspektive, Beihefte zu “Der Staat”, Band 24, Duncker & Humblot, (pp. 9–30).
Künkler, M., & Stein, T. (2020c). Böckenförde on the Right to Life, Human Dignity, and its Meta-positive Foundations. In Böckenförde, E.-W. (2020). Religion, Law, and Democracy. Selected Writings. (Mirjam Künkler and Tine Stein, eds.), Oxford University Press.
Manent, A.-F. (2018). Democracy and Religion in the Legal and Political Thought of Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde. Oxford Journal of Law and Religion, 7(1), 74–96.
Manterfeld, N. (2000). Die Grenzen der Verfassung: Möglichkeiten limitierender Verfassungstheorie des Grundgesetzes am Beispiel E.-W. Böckenfördes. Berlin: Duncker & Humblot.
Masing, J., & Wieland, J. (Eds.). (2011). Menschenwürde–Demokratie–Christliche Gerechtigkeit. Tagungsband zum Festlichen Kolloquium aus Anlass des 80. Geburtstags von Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde. Berlin: Duncker & Humblot.
Mehring, R., & Otto, M. (Eds.). (2014). Voraussetzungen und Garantien des Staates. Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenfördes Staatsverständnis. Nomos: Baden-Baden.
Müller, J.-W. (2018). What the Dictum really meant and what it might mean for us. Constellations: An International Journal of Critical and Democratic Theory, 45(2), 196–206.
Pavelka, P. (2015). Bürger und Christ. Politische Ethik und christliches Menschenbild bei Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde. Fribourg: Academic Press and Freiburg: Herder.
Sacksofsky, U. (2018). Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde’s Oeuvre on Religious Freedom applied to recent Decisions of the European Court of Human Rights. In German Law Journal, 19(2) (Special issue—Statism, Secularism, Liberalism Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde Beyond Germany) 301–320.
Stepan, A. C. (2001). The World’s Religious Systems and Democracy: Crafting the Twin Tolerations. In A. C. Stepan (Ed.), Arguing Comparative Politics (pp. 213–253), New York: Oxford University Press.
Wahl, R., & Wieland, J. (Eds.). (2002). Das Recht des Menschen in der Welt. Kolloquium aus Anlass des 70. Geburtstages von Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde. Berlin: Duncker & Humblot.
Acknowledgments
Parts of this text draw on Künkler and Stein (2017a), and Künkler and Stein (2018a). The authors thank Vineet Thakur for excellent comments, and Mirjam Künkler thanks the Center for Law as Culture in Bonn for providing her with an inspiring and convivial intellectual environment where parts of this text were written.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2020 Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Künkler, M., Stein, T. (2020). Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde on Law, Religion, and Democratic Models of Secularism. In: Roy, A., Becker, M. (eds) Dimensions of Constitutional Democracy. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-3899-5_4
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-3899-5_4
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Singapore
Print ISBN: 978-981-15-3898-8
Online ISBN: 978-981-15-3899-5
eBook Packages: Political Science and International StudiesPolitical Science and International Studies (R0)