Abstract
AbstractThe issues related to the role of religion in the public education system have been a public topic for a long time, and related debates have been cyclically revived by specific events. In this contribution, we explore the reasons why Italian grassroots actors do not tend to size up the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) jurisprudence and the plurality of juridical regimes dealing with religion and education as windows of opportunity. First, we analyze the intertwinement of different juridical regimes dealing with religion and education, and the national case law on the topic. Then, drawing on original semi-structured interviews, we analyze the indirect effects of the ECtHR case law on the mobilizations and advocacy strategies at the grassroots level around religion and education. Finally, we discuss the research outcomes, outlining how the non-interference of the Court in state-religions regimes may result in the limited impact and effectiveness of the Court's protection of religious freedoms.
Highlights
This article focuses on the normative impact that human rights norms exert on social struggles — in the strategies and discourse of religious and civil society actors — around religion and education in the Italian context
In Italy apart from these two cases, no other cases have been filed on the topic of religious freedom in the education field — despite the fact that many of the actors involved in the field of religion and education describe the Italian situation as “discriminatory.”
As we show human rights have been influential in shaping the discourse and strategies of the various religious actors
Summary
This article focuses on the normative impact that human rights norms (emanating pre-eminently, albeit not exclusively, from the ECtHR [European Court of Human Rights]) exert on social struggles — in the strategies and discourse of religious and civil society actors — around religion and education in the Italian context. Litigation in the ECtHR has often not been pursued as a central avenue of contestation on behalf of minority actors or secularists: the national legal frame and the Concordat accept religious pluralism in principle, and provide for the option of nonCatholics to opt out of RE, the basic principles are in line with human rights norms. In this sense, mobilizations in the field of religion and education are mostly framed within a national horizon. Our results, quite similar to the results of the Greek case analysis (see, Markoviti in this issue), offer an interesting contribution to the study of the indirect effects of the ECtHR, by proposing a general hypothesis to be further tested
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