Constitutional Intolerance: the Other in Europe's constitutional repertoires

High note lecture by Marietta van der Tol followed by reception.

What does it mean to tolerate diversity in a post-Christian and post-secular state? In many European states, political conflicts over diversity express themselves in constitutional repertoires, such as politically one-sided interpretation of constitutional concepts, the use of constitutional amendments, and even the complete overhaul of a constitutional system. This lecture articulates a concern over the rise of “constitutional intolerance”: the instrumentalization of constitutions for intolerant purposes by electoral majorities in Europe. The guiding argument is that intolerance is not only a potential undercurrent of illiberalism or indeed of liberalism – but fundamentally relies on the vulnerability of constitutional structures to political expressions of intolerance.

Marietta van der Tol is Landecker Lecturer at the Faculty of Divinity at the University of Cambridge, with a five-year research project titled “Imagining Sacred Lands” within comparative study of politics, law and religion.