La religión en el espacio público: los símbolos religiosos ante el derecho

For some years now, religious symbols have been a conflictive issue in Western countries. Legal and social issues concerning religious symbols were in the past but an anecdote. However, with the beginning of the XXI century they have become quite frequent and demand the attention of politicians and lawyers. The Law has faced with a vein of practical problems at the national, regional and international levels. The complexity of the matter, the disparity of cases that have been raised, the importance of Comparative law in this subject, etc. evidence that the legal study of religious symbols has become an specific field. This work is based on three basic elements of analysis. The first is the concept and morphology of religious symbol. The other two elements of study focus on the context in which the symbol is presented: the physical or immaterial "space" and the "people" carrying religious symbols. From these two elements -spaces and people- various situations with unique characteristics determine the specialty of each issue.