Abstract:

Six years after prohibiting the wearing of headscarf by students in public schools, the French state passed a law prohibiting the wearing of the burka in public places. In the United States there is more tolerance for wearing signs of religious affiliation. This difference in the legal responses can be understood in reference to a different background understanding of the fundamental presuppositions of republicanism in the two legal and political orders, which also defines their conception of secularism. The law enacted in France can be understood in a general frame of a paternalistic state, which is seen as legitimized to dictate to the citizens the proper exercise of their reason. In the United States the dominant understanding of republicanism attempts to reconcile the natural rights philosophy with the conception of the common good. The trust towards the use of collective power and the legislature dominant in France can be opposed to the distrust towards the same elements in the United States.

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