Academic freedom as a source of rights’ violations: a European perspective

Abstract

AbstractThe application of academic freedom may lead to a violation of individual rights, such as the right to respect private life or institutional rights such as university autonomy, or the right of the religious community to self-determination. These collisions between rights are resolved by constitutional courts either according to the proportionality test or by balancing the rights. This paper investigates cases from Czechia, Germany, Italy, Poland, and Spain, where academic freedom collided with other constitutional rights, in order to determine methods for resolving these types of conflicts. This analysis demonstrates the way in which proportionality allows the construction of the content of academic freedom. It also shows the reasons why academic freedom could become a weak right and why sometimes it is a strong right.