Commissioner for Education addresses conference on State Regulation and Religious Freedom

Commissioner for Education addresses conference on State Regulation and Religious Freedom

Published June 15, 2026

The Commissioner for Education, Chief Justice Emeritus Vincent A. De Gaetano, was one of twenty-four speakers at a conference in Kraków, Poland, held on 1 and 2 June 2026.

The conference, held at the Collegium Novum of the Jagiellonian University, was organised by the Centre for Law and Religious Freedom within the Department of Roman Law of the Jagiellonian University in collaboration with the Religious Freedom Clinic at Harvard Law School (Cambridge, Massachusetts) and the Centre for Law and Religion Studies at Brigham-Young University (Provo, Utah). 

The event brought together twenty-four speakers, including judges, scholars and practitioners from twelve countries, over twenty invited guests from seven countries, as well as students, representatives of NGOs and the public – a total of approximately 130 conference participants. 

Over the two days of the conference the participants discussed various aspects of religious freedom in light of direct or indirect state measures encroaching upon religious freedom under various aspects of social and political life, including the recognition of religious groups, especially minority religious groups; religious education at various levels; the religious freedom of migrants; and the freedom of religious social service providers.

The Commissioner for Education, together with three other judges from England and Wales, Portugal and Poland, addressed general issues of religious freedom in various countries and in light of the case-law of the European Court of Human Rights, with particular reference to the state’s duty to respect the right of parents to have their children educated in conformity with the parents’ own religious and philosophical convictions.

The Commissioner also moderated the panel on State Regulation of Religious Education, which saw speakers from Notre Dame Law School (Indiana), the American College of Greece (Athens), Complutense University (Madrid) and Villanova University (Pennsylvania) discuss, among other things, issues of institutional ethos and accreditation, and field several related questions from the audience.