Type: Judgment

Authority: National Courts: Supreme Courts (Austria) - Corte Costituzionale Federale

Date: 03/06/2008

Subject: A professor at the faculty of medicine in Vienna expresses heterodox opinions about Nazism and on the extreme right and is expelled from the university for having seriously damaged the prestige of the institution. The professor lodges a claim and his case arrives before the Federal Constitutional Court of Vienna, which establishes that the university is a juridical person of public law and that, in a democratic society, it has the right to be protected from illegitimate interferences. In such sense a professor, member of the university council, cannot violate the honourableness of the institution. The professor’s statements are a serious breach to the latter, according to § 21 par. 14 of the university Statute and are neither protected by art. 10 of the ECHR, nor have they Constitutional protection

Original language: Austrian

Classification: Freedoms - Art. 10 Freedom of thought

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