Religious Freedom and the Right to Private and Family Life: The Case of Baptism and the Child’s Autonomy
by David Katz Rotnitzky
Question(s) at stake
Whether a mother’s decision to baptise her four-year-old daughter interferes with the father’s right to educate his children according to his own convictions and with the child’s freedom of religion.
Outcome of the ruling
The Provincial Court Granada upheld the decision of the Court of First Instance to deny the mother’s request to baptise her daughter and dismissed the mother’s appeal.
Country:
Official citation
Provincial Court Granada, Order of 6 April 2022, no. 28/2022 (Audiencia Provincial de Granada, Auto de 06 de abril 2022, Auto número 28/2022)
Topic(s)
Keywords:
Right of parents to ensure the religious and moral education of their children Best interests of the child Religion or belief Right to respect for family life
Tag(s):
Bibliographic information
Access case report
View case report in the CUREDI databaseAbout the authors
David Katz Rotnitzky (Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Department Law and Anthropology, Germany)
David Katz is a PhD Candidate in the Law & Anthropology Department at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle. He holds a bachelor’s degree in social and cultural anthropology from the University of Barcelona (Spain), and was awarded the European Master’s Degree in Human Rights and Democratization by the European Inter University Centre in Venice (Italy), for which he spent a semester at the UNESCO Chair on Education for Human Rights, Democracy and Peace at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (Greece). In his master’s thesis, “Deconstructing the Right to Freedom of Religion or Belief in Human Rights: A Multidisciplinary Approach on Antisemitism towards the Jewish Community of Thessaloniki”, he analysed the right to freedom of religion and belief and the correlation between the inherent antisemitism in some spheres of Greek society and the limits on the enjoyment of religious rights by the Jewish community of Thessaloniki. His current research falls within the project “Cultural and Religious Diversity under State Law across Europe” (CUREDI).