19 Oktober 2022
Sex, God, and Blasphemy
Blasphemy used to be a grave offence once. Now, it is on the decline, making room for freedom of expression. Yet, two judgments of last week show that blasphemy has managed to re-enter the stage through the back door. In this blogpost, I argue that although both cases ended well, i.e. were decided in favour of freedom of expression of artists and activists, both courts erred in their assessment of the role of religion and religious sentiment in European secular democracies. Continue reading >>
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13 Oktober 2022
The Cardinal vs. the Theater
On 11 October 2022, the Czech Constitutional Court published its eagerly-awaited judgment resolving the conflict between religious belief and freedom of artistic expression. The case was initiated by a constitutional complaint of the head of the Czech Roman Catholic Church, Archbishop of Prague, Cardinal Dominik Duka. The complainants alleged that a theater‘s allegorical plays which mocked the catholic church and their belief were blasphemous and violated their constitutional rights, in particular a freedom of religion. Continue reading >>
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09 November 2020
Divine Decision-Making
The most recent abortion decision of 22 October 2020 of Poland’s Constitutional Court (“the Court”) did not come as a surprise. It is not, as some commentators would like to see, an aberration, a departure from previous liberal and human rights-based standards by a group of judges linked to the Law and Justice party. Rather, it is a consequence of the right-wing constitutionalism that has dominated the Court for years. This discourse that introduced religious dogma as the basis for legal reasoning is undemocratic and exclusionary. It presents religious worldviews as textual consequences of the constitution without taking into account the voice of citizens. The persistence of this type of constitutionalism can be demonstrated on example of a number of cases important for the public sphere in Poland. Continue reading >>
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01 Juli 2012