Communist Party of Germany v. the Federal Republic of Germany | |
---|---|
Decided 20 July 1957 | |
Case | 250/57 |
Nationality of parties | West Germany |
President Humphrey Waldock |
Communist Party of Germany v. the Federal Republic of Germany was a 1957 European Commission of Human Rights decision which upheld the dissolution of the Communist Party of Germany by the Federal Constitutional Court a year earlier.
The German federal government had petitioned for the Communist Party to be banned in 1952 on the basis that the party's revolutionary practice means "the impairment or the abolition of the fundamental liberal democratic order in the Federal Republic". [1] Following hearings, the Federal Constitutional Court ordered in 1956 that the party be dissolved and its assets confiscated, and banned the creation of substitute organizations. [2] The neo-Nazi Socialist Reich Party had been banned due to the same government petition back in 1952, but the Communist Party's lengthy defense in part had caused a delay. The party argued that the constitutional article 21(2) itself was unconstitutional because it violated the rights of freedom of speech and freedom of association, and that the Marxist–Leninist ideology was a "science" that should not be subjected to judicial review. [3]
The Commission referred to the article 17 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which states that no one may use the rights guaranteed by the Convention to seek the abolition of other rights, and found no need to consider the case with respect to articles 9, 10 and 11. It found the appeal inadmissible and thus upheld the ban on the party on the basis that the dictatorship of the proletariat stage advocated by the Communist doctrine in order to establish a regime is "incompatible with the Convention, inasmuch as it includes the destruction of many of the rights or freedoms enshrined therein." [4] As a result, pursuing the governance of workers (the "dictatorship of the proletariat") is not compatible with the convention even if it is done with constitutional methods. [5]
The decision is a landmark case establishing limits on freedom of expression on speech that putatively endangers democracy or is based on a totalitarian doctrine. [6]
Many of the same arguments laid out in this decision were repeated by the European Court of Human Rights when it upheld the ban of the Welfare Party in Refah Partisi (the Welfare Party) and Others v. Turkey in 2001, [7] a decision criticized by Human Rights Watch for alleged inconsistency.
The European Convention on Human Rights is an international convention to protect human rights and political freedoms in Europe. Drafted in 1950 by the then newly formed Council of Europe, the convention entered into force on 3 September 1953. All Council of Europe member states are party to the convention and new members are expected to ratify the convention at the earliest opportunity.
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The Communist Party of Germany was a major far-left political party in the Weimar Republic during the interwar period, an underground resistance movement in Nazi Germany, and a minor party in West Germany during the postwar period until it was banned by the Federal Constitutional Court in 1956.
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Communist Party (Nepeceriști) was a Romanian communist party, officially registered 31 July 2006. The term Nepeceriști means people who were not members of the Romanian Communist Party (PCR).
Freedom of speech is the concept of the inherent human right to voice one's opinion publicly without fear of censorship or punishment. "Speech" is not limited to public speaking and is generally taken to include other forms of expression. The right is preserved in the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights and is granted formal recognition by the laws of most nations. Nonetheless, the degree to which the right is upheld in practice varies greatly from one nation to another. In many nations, particularly those with authoritarian forms of government, overt government censorship is enforced. Censorship has also been claimed to occur in other forms and there are different approaches to issues such as hate speech, obscenity, and defamation laws.
Vogt v. Germany (1996) 21 EHRR 205, (17851/91) was a case decided by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in 1995. The case concerned a Mrs. Vogt who was suspended from her teaching job at a public secondary school because of her past membership in the German Communist Party. The ECHR ruled that this application of Berufsverbot violated provisions in the European Convention on Human Rights relating to freedom of expression and freedom of association.
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"Necessary in a democratic society" is a test found in Articles 8–11 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which provides that the state may impose restrictions of these rights only if such restrictions are "necessary in a democratic society" and proportional to the legitimate aims enumerated in each article. According to the Council of Europe's handbook on the subject, the phrase is "arguably one of the most important clauses in the entire Convention". Indeed, the Court has itself written that "the concept of a democratic society ... prevails throughout the Convention". The purpose of making such claims justiciable is to ensure that the restriction is actually necessary, rather than enacted for political expediency, which is not allowed. Articles 8–11 of the convention are those that protect right to family life, freedom of religion, freedom of speech, and freedom of association respectively. Along with the other tests which are applied to these articles, the restrictions on Articles 8–11 have been described as "vast limitations", in contrast to American law which recognizes nearly unlimited right to freedom of speech under the First Amendment.