Comparing law and religion judgments in the rise of judicial populism. The kirpan case-law in Italy and Canada as a case-study
Bibliographic record
Abstract
ABSTRACT: This essay explores the intersection of religious symbols and judicial populism, focusing on the case-law related to the kirpan in Italy and Canada. In an era of rising populism, religious symbols become political tools, creating an “us-versus-them” narrative. The kirpan, a Sikh ritual dagger, can serve as a case-study for judicial populism, examining contrasting approaches in Italian and Canadian case-law. Italian case-law prioritizes public safety over religious freedom, while Canadian case-law adopts a nuanced approach, accommodating the wearing of the kirpan under some conditions. The kirpan’s legal ambiguity highlights the tension between religious freedom and public safety, reflecting the broader challenges of recognizing different identities in a multicultural society. SUMMARY: 1. Religious symbols, populism, and judicial populism - 2. Methodology and research questions - 3. The kirpan as a case-study for judicial populism - 4. Judicial populism in action: the Italian case-law - 5. Precautions against judicial populism: the Canadian case-law - 6. Countering judicial populism.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.010 | 0.033 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.004 | 0.006 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.035 | 0.035 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.010 | 0.003 |
| Open science | 0.003 | 0.007 |
| Research integrity | 0.005 | 0.007 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.004 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".