Personal autonomy and the option of religious law

Abstract

The 'millet' and 'personal law' systems, found in countries such as India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Singapore, Malaysia, and Israel, are long-standing models of state accommodation of religious norms in family law. This article, a work of applied normative legal theory, uses the Indian system of personal laws as a test case to consider the extent to which these modes of accommodation undermine personal autonomy. In particular, it studies the claim, made both in the context of the Indian personal law system and in debates in other jurisdictions on the use of religious norms in family law, that if people had a choice between religious law and generally applicable secular law, this would remove a..