Should minorities be allowed to make their own laws?

--What are the limits of tolerance in liberal societies? --What amounts to signing a social contract?--When can community self-determination supersede individual rights claims?

Are the identities and cultures of minority groups valuable? "Yes," said the roundtable, affirming a sentiment perhaps difficult to disagree with. But should religious and tribal groups be allowed to sacrifice their goats, marry their cousins, or engage in cannibalism within the borders of the US? "Uhh...No," said the group.

For such cases, it was relatively to judge that a national government's duty to prevent egregious violations of human and animal well-being would trump cultural claims to their legitimacy. Yet beyond extreme examples, the group considered whether more efforts should be made to legally accommodate the cultural practices of minority groups. Roundtablers agreed that a good deal of value lay in allowing minority groups defined by some sort of cultural ties to preserve their customs and traditions. Since such represented a general "right" of these peoples to preserve these groups identity, free expression, and beliefs, a regard for such groups' "cultural rights" ideally should be represented with regards to the law.

How could such efforts be made? Should different laws apply to different segments of the populace… so as to accommodate those of different beliefs? One roundtabler noted that such a policy was adopted in India. For instance, turban-wearing Sikhs were allowed to carry daggers on their person while others were forbidden to. Perhaps such a policy was necessary to satisfy members of different religions. Yet the same roundtabler also pointed out that the policy could also deepen group divisions in a country by reinforcing differences.

Another discussant proposed that regional cultural differences could best be accommodated by increasing powers of local legislation. The national government would outline basic protections and guidelines, then allow local communities to decide the details of more specific cultural issues. Yet others noted the both logistical difficulties and fundamental problems with this concept. Someone asserted that certain issues, such as gay marriage or others pertaining to the rights of individuals, illustrated the case for uniform policies across the nation. Would it make sense for a couple be legally married in one state but fail to have that status, and the rights such represents, recognized in another? Additionally, dividing sovereignty from locale to locale could cause confusion when people desired to travel across borders and a feeling of disconnect between them akin to the creation of many different “nations” within the whole as geographical group divisions were reinforced.

Other roundtables yet considered the mechanisms of inclusion already existent in our democratic pluralist system. To a large extent, perhaps our status as a “melting pot” nation, long accustomed to many diverse groups, already makes us lean towards efforts of general inclusion; a roundtabler noted one example of multilingual election materials. Additionally, unlike France, the US only bans extreme public expression of religion such as preaching in schools. Perhaps for the needs of most religious and ethnic groups, American democratic politics is perhaps inclusive enough to accommodate a sufficient amount of uniqueness and variation.

Yet perhaps the cases of certain groups required different consideration, specifically those of indigenous groups such as the Aborigines or the Native Americans. The Roundtable noted that these groups might both require and merit more legal leeway than the regular political system could provide. For these groups, the need for greater autonomy was more clearly necessary for their needs of self-preservation since their cultures were so greatly divergent from the national mainstream; having their lifestyles governed by laws of the national norm would be too much of a threat to their cultural identities. These groups could have a compelling case for greater sovereignty within their territories since these groups had long desired to exist like separate nations even since the founding of the Australian and American states, respectively. Perhaps our right to intervene in such groups’ practices should be extremely limited since participation in their culture is a voluntary choice.

Perhaps the Roundtable thus stayed true to its American bias, firmly believing in the value of our “melting-pot”-“patchwork-quilt”-call-it-what-you-may nation to hash out its internal differences through a(n at least relatively) inclusive national political process. “Unity in diversity,” we say, except for Charlie’s Aborigines.