Comparative legal system - Essay Example

In a religious legal system all the religious laws converge to one ultimate concept and that is religion. However in a secular legal system, by contrast, changes and amendments forms a necessary part of the process as the concept of the system is to continuously improve formal law and practices, and their influence on the tradition of life. People and state-welfare is given due importance and the office of jurisdiction is reinforced by guarantees of judicial independence. There are few countries where the legal system is exclusively religious, though some (mainly Islamic countries) aspire to this.

It is not only the State that upholds the responsibility of implementing laws in the religious system, even the people seem to share a common ground of 1understanding that no tolerance should be practiced while dealing with violation of the religious laws. On the other hand a large number of countries have secular legal system where the laws are made and enacted with a constant effort to develop the social and financial infrastructure, human rights and freedom. This is well illustrated in the very first words of the First Amendment to the Constitution 2of the United States, which came into force in 1789: “Congress shall make no laws respecting the establishment of religion”.

The United States has many constitutional and statutory guarantees of religious liberty. Most important are two sentences in the Constitution of the United States. The first is the Test Oath Clause, in Article 6, clause 3, which provides: “[N]o religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States”. England has historically required office holders to swear an oath that they believed in essential doctrines of the Church of England, or of Protestantism more generally.

The Test Oath Clause prohibits