Not Taking it on Faith: State and Religious Influences on European Court of Human Rights Judges in Freedom of Religion Cases

The effects of international judges’ personal characteristics on their judging

“…Some studies have, thus, looked into the possible role of religion in selecting/appointing international judges, but also in international human rights adjudication, 16 notably in the freedom of religion matters and cases involving a complex relationship between women's human rights and religion (for example, abortion rights). 17 Other contributions have considered whether there is a religious diversity gap on the international bench and justifications for the promotion of such diversity among international judges, including the enhancement of the international courts' normative legitimacy, fight against systematic religious discrimination and the 'value-added' argument. 18 Furthermore, one study also surveys individual (separate and dissenting) opinions by ICJ judges looking therein for religious text citations to establish whether these judges incorporate their religious identity in their judging.…”

How secular and religiously free are Europe’s “secular” states?

“…the role of religion in the public sphere[and]...the veil is commonly perceived as a symbol of women's oppression in Muslim communities, based on the argument that women do not wear it by choice but out of social pressure. This type of restriction has been upheld by the European Court of Human Rights(Koev 2019) and the Court of Justice of the European Union with regard to restrictions by private companies in the workplace, as long as it is in the context of a neutral dress code (Pin & Witte 2020). The secular quality of these restrictions is supported by studies which show that religious Europeans are more accepting of Muslim head coverings than secular Europeans(Helbling 2014;van der Noll et al 2018) These three prominent examples of how secular values can be given, in law, priority over religion demonstrate that there is a clash between religious values and the concept of human rights.…”