The Freedom of Conscience and Religion in Light of the Rulings of the German Federal Constitutional Court – Selected Issues

This article is an attempt on synthetic analysis of selected issues concerning liberty of conscience and religion in Germany, specifically, problems resulting from the jurisdiction of Federal Constitutional Court of Germany. The introduction is dedicated to the short description of constitutional regulations of freedom of conscience and religion in Germany. What follows, are the most important principles adopted by the Court in the initial stage of its activity. The next part of the text presents recent trends in the jurisdiction. The article gives accounts of the Court’s adjudications upon cases concerning wearing hijabs in public schools, offering an animal sacrifices, the way in which public institutions inform the society of religious unions’ activities, the obligation imposed on churches to observe the constitutional laws and the protection of Sunday as a weekly day of rest. In conclusions some differences between standpoints of German and Polish Constitutional Courts were revealed.

Freedom of conscience is the basis of a democratic state and a pluralistic society. It has been formed slowly in the course of long-lasting historical processes and philosophical discourse. Although intuitively understood, this concept is still not clearly defined. This freedom is guaranteed by the normative acts in force in the UN system, as well as in the Council of Europe and the European Union and in the basic laws of individual states. Its protection is the conscience clause, which is not regulated by the basic law. The aim of this research is to answer a question whether the conscience clause is a legal or purely ethical category. In view of the broad scope with regard to this issue, the paper is devoted to the question of determining the legal nature of the physician’s conscience clause.

Reliable Justification of the Court Judgment in the Context of the Judgment of the European Court of Human Rights of March 9, 2023 in the Case of Cupial v. Poland

One of the elements of the right to a fair trial is the right of the individual to a reliable justification of the decision in the case, derived from the right to the appropriate shap- ing of the court procedure. The aim of the article is to show that this is a key element in cases where the court adjudicates the rights and freedoms of an individual, setting their limits. In the judgment of March 9, 2023, in the case of Cupial against Poland, the Euro- pean Court of Human Rights emphasized the special role of a reliable justification of the judgment. The author considers this requirement as one of the fundamental guarantees of respecting the rights and freedoms of the individual, which in the context of the dis- cussed case is the freedom of conscience and religion, and the right to ensure children a religious upbringing in accordance with parents convictions. The analysis of the indi- cated issue was made on the basis of the dogmatic-legal method.