Post-separation Arrangements and Parental Religious Beliefs: The Appearance of Article 9
by Alice Margaria
Question(s) at stake
Whether the prohibition for a mother to expose her children to the members of Raëlism, the religious movement she adheres to, violates Articles 8, 9, 10, 11, both alone and in combination with Article 14 of the ECHR.
Outcome of the ruling
The complaints were declared manifestly ill-founded because the contested prohibition had been aimed at reconciling the opposite educational choices of parents with a view to ensure the children’s best interests.
Country:
Official citation
F.L. v. France, App. no. 61162/00, 03 November 2005
Topic(s)
Keywords:
Right to respect for private life Right to respect for family life Freedom of thought, conscience and religion Best interests of the child Private divorce Custody
Tag(s):
Bibliographic information
Access case report
View case report in the CUREDI databaseAbout the authors
Alice Margaria (Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Department Law and Anthropology, Germany)
Alice Margaria is a Research Fellow in the the Law and Anthropology Department of the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle. She holds an LL.M. with distinction in Human Rights from University College London, an LL.M. in Comparative, European and International Laws, and a Ph.D. in Law from the European University Institute (Florence). Her doctoral thesis (forthcoming as a monograph, CUP 2018) provides a socio-legal analysis of the way fatherhood is understood, constructed, and redefined in the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights. Before joining the MPI, she also worked as a post-doctoral researcher at the Fundamental Rights Laboratory (Turin, Italy). Her project was a comparative investigation of the role of judges in bridging the gap between the social reality and the legal existence of families created via assisted reproductive technologies.
Margaria has a track record of publications that focus on parenthood and assisted reproductive technologies, anonymous birth, and the child’s right to an identity, with a particular emphasis on the ECtHR jurisprudence. She has been a visiting scholar at various institutions, including Emory University, the University of Lund, and the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology. Margaria has also worked with international and non-governmental organizations, including UNICEF’s Office of Research, OSCE, and Human Rights Law Network.
Her current research builds on her expertise in family law and human rights but adopts a new methodological perspective. By talking to the protagonists, Margaria’s project aims to shed light on the human stories behind ECtHR litigation pertaining to family life and cultural diversity.