Protecting Religious Freedom and Conscience: What Australia Might Learn from Germany

The meanings and history of "freedom of conscience" are much-disputed.For example, Nehal Bhuta argues, "its contemporary meanings are an unstable mixture of values and preoccupations derived from distinct political problems-the management of sectarian strife and the constitution of sovereign power, the bourgeois revolt against the absolutist Polizeistaat, and finally, a postwar attempt to refound Western European political culture on a politics of human dignity.This unstable mixture is the foundation for the European Court's circumstantial casuistry in the headscarf cases."See Nehal Bhuta, Two Concepts of Religious Freedom in the European Court of Human Rights, 113 SOUTH ATLANTIC QUARTERLY 9, 11 (2014).4. See, for example, the reports published by the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom and the materials available at the Pew Research Center (www.pewforum.org).In Europe, see Martina Prpic, Religion and Human Rights, EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT (2018),