Loi du 9 decembre 1905 concernant la separation des Eglises et de l'Etat

The French law of 9 December 1905 concerning the separation of Church and State is a primary legal source, the actual foundational statute establishing laicite as the governing principle of French state relations with religion, enacted by the Third Republic's parliament. As the enacted text itself, it is directly authoritative for what the law requires and how it structures religious property and state neutrality. It is a legal instrument reflecting a specific and contested political settlement of its own era, and its practical application and interpretation, including questions about religious dress and public expression, have continued to develop and to be debated in French law and society well beyond the text's original 1905 provisions, a history the statute itself does not narrate and that later French jurisprudence has continued to write.