A systems theoretical and reflexive law framework for the regulation of religious family life
Bibliographic record
Abstract
What is the best institutional relationship between law and religion in family life? This question arises in response to a double-bind: some individuals within religious groups experience discrimination in their communities. However, in seeking civil remedies these individuals may be forced to abandon parts of their religious identities: they struggle to express themselves as both religious individuals and bearers of human rights because the systems that mediate their experience of the world make absolutist demands upon them. This Thesis makes three central contributions based on reflexive law: First, it identifies reliance on direct, command and control interventions in religious and family life as a common thread across existing models. Despite different conceptual positions on the relationship between law and religion, these interventions have tended to rely on and assume direct forms of State regulation. Second, it argues that systems are resistant to these direct, external interventions, leading to a trilemma: ineffectiveness, unresponsiveness or incoherence. This Thesis uses the trilemma as an analytical lens to deconstruct the examples of mahr agreements and religious divorce across four example jurisdictions: UK, Canada, India and Israel. This analysis establishes two criteria to structure decisions about the circumstances and manner of State interventions in family life: first, interventions should preserve functional differentiation and communicative freedoms. Second, interventions ought to be justified according to the normative criteria of relational autonomy, substantive equality and care. These criteria – reflexive and normative - are interwoven: reflexivity is underpinned by values and in turn these values are necessary for this vision of a functionally differentiated society. Third, this Thesis proposes a reflexive model for devising particularised, indirect interventions intended to alter these systems and modify power structures. This Thesis defends an arrangement that promotes bounded self-regulation of religious family life through a decentralised, collaborative and democratically experimental model.
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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 | 0.009 | 0.007 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.004 | 0.048 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.009 | 0.009 |
| Open science | 0.003 | 0.004 |
| Research integrity | 0.003 | 0.005 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.006 | 0.001 |
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".