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This article sets out to explore the extent to which developments currently taking place at the interface between law and religion in domestic, regional and international law can be conceptualized as instances of larger, multidimensional processes of juridification. We rely on an expansive notion of juridification, departing from the more narrow sense of juridificiation as the gradually increasing “colonization of the lifeworld” proposed by Jürgen Habermas in his Theory of Communicative Action (1987; Vol. 2, Beacon Press). More specifically, the article adapts the multidimensional notion of juridification outlined by Anders Molander and Lars Christian Blichner in their article ‘Mapping Juridification’ (2008; 14 European Law Journal 36), and develops it into a more context-specific notion of juridification that is attendant to the specific nature of religion as a subject matter for law.

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In an attempt to accommodate the increasing religious and cultural diversity in European societies, religious instruction in public schools is being rearranged across Europe. However, the issue is sensitive owing to the societal matters involved, such as multiculturalism, minority issues, nationalism, and citizenship. A crucial question is how religious instruction can be organized in public (state-funded) schools so as to conform to fundamental human rights. The European Court of Human Rights has also recently dealt in Folgerø and Others v. Norway with an ambitious attempt to introduce compulsory non-confessional religious instruction in public schools with the aim of enhancing dialogue and cultural understanding and take into account the future status of children as adult members of both national and international societies. Dividing children into separate study groups according to their faith had been dismissed as a form of segregation and parallel multiculturalism. This article focuses on Folgerø and Others v. Norway. What is at stake in the argumentation before the European Court of Human Rights, and how does it reason concerning religion and life-views, religious freedom and the aims of religious instruction in public schools? Based on this analysis, the article discusses what it means that a conflict over what constitutes adequate religious instruction is brought to a legal forum and the consequences this has for what will be understood as acceptable instruction.