The Jewish symbolic fencing at the intersection between religious freedom and planning law

The essay analyses and contrasts the case-law on the eruv, a symbolic fencing erected by the Jewish community to alleviate some obligations imposed by the observance of the Jewish law. It takes into accounts three legal orders, Canada, United States and Australia, and focuses on two major issues: on the one hand, the paper identifies the criteria employed by the Courts to read the eruv within the framework of Constitutional law; on the other hand, it focuses on the notion of ‘religious symbol’, asking whether the eruv is considered as such in the litigation.