47

This essay explores the historical modes of secularization of law in America and in Europe, which have led to different understandings of secularism. It focuses on the American Revolution and the French Revolution, as moments in which secularization took the shape of the separation of church and state. Then, it reflects on the shifts that secularism and separatism have undergone over the centuries, and their implications on moral and political discourse. The different understandings of the same principle are confirmed by the very poor legal transplants between European and American courts in the field of religious freedom and the separation of church and state.