Background:
This session creates a new annual encounter for judges since each year a different theme will be dealt with. For 2011, the theme is secularism, the judge and the law. While in principle it is a simple thing to affirm the existence of secularism and demonstrate its value, it regularly causes passionate debates when, media-reported cases aside, it questions other fundamental liberties and principles such as freedom of expression, religious freedom, freedom of conscience, right to privacy, matrimonial freedom, neutrality and so on.
In various areas (labour law, law of persons and of the family), when faced with a multicultural society and religious pluralism, in referring to national and international provisions, sometimes regulated by European jurisprudence, the judge may be led to question the boundaries of secularism and what damage may be done to it.
Course teaching method:
Through a multidisciplinary approach, this session will allow speakers and participants to exchange views on their conceptions and interpretation of secularism in order to discern, both in terms of principles and in legal terms, its meaning and scope.