The Role of General Clause of (Public) Morals Based on Selected European Court of Human Rights’ Judgments

Abstract

(Public) morals is a specific example of a general clause that bridges the gap between legal norms and a wide array of non-legal rules. The indeterminacy of this clause allows the standard of morals to be construed with due consideration for various criteria, values, principles and local circumstances. At the same time, in a culturally diverse society, difficulties in translating ethical issues into the legal language come to light. Consequently, we have both national and international legislation in which the premise of (public) morals is the legitimate objective/aim for restricting certain freedoms and rights. In turn, judicial bodies such as the European Court of Human Rights, as described in this paper, encounter problems in interpretation and the need to use different interpretative methods to give the right meaning to this concept.