HEGEMONY OF STATE AND AUTONOMY OF CHURCH LAW IN FR GERMANY AND REPUBLIC OF SERBIA

Abstract

This paper analyzes limits and interaction between the state and the autonomous law of churches and religious communities in FR Germany and the Republic of Serbia in which the relationship between the state and churches and religious communities is based on the principle of cooperative separation. The state law and the autonomous law of churches and religious communities are different sets of legal rules. Although the relationship between the state law and the autonomous law of churches and religious communities can’t be determined in advance and for all by one general formula, the tendency is that the intersections of these sets in the fled of religious identity of churches and religious communities are narrower, when the autonomous law is independent from the state law, and broader in matters of performing public services by the churches and religious communities, in which case the autonomous law depending on the state law .