American lawyers, William Snyder and Brendon Berne tell us about the status of conscientious objector, which is the refusal to perform certain acts required by an authority.
A status mentioned in the French Senate by Senator Laurence Muller-Brown, who proposed to include it in the bill on the vaccination pass, in order to allow the French who wish to oppose vaccination.
What is conscientious objector status and how is it applied in the United States?
William Snyder, a lawyer in Ohio, former lawyer at the Paris Bar, talks about this status of conscientious objector and the way it imposed itself in the United States in the 1960s, at the time of the Vietnam War. where many peace movements were emerging, including the hippie movement against the military-industrial complex. At that time, no less than 72,000 conscientious objectors had asked for exonerations not to participate in the conflict. While some had invoked an exemption on religious grounds, others had done so because of their pacifist nature. At first, their requests had almost all been refused by the government, but an appeal by these “rebellious” had resulted in the examination of this status of conscientious objector by the Supreme Court. Indeed, after considering the religious exemption, the Supreme Court had thought, one thing leading to another, about the exemption of the plaintiff who follows his own conscience, without belief in God or a supreme being. She had finally agreed to recognize the existence of a right of conscientious objector in a humanistic and secular sense.
Since then, this right can apply to “dissenters” if the following conditions are met: a sincere, significant belief, ethical values comparable to believers in denominational religions, and “opposition to imposition” by the government against the plaintiff’s will.
Can conscientious objection in France be invoked against the vaccination pass in France?
According to Master Snyder, this status of vaccine conscientious objector can apply to the refusal of vaccination, because it is a question of belief that is both sincere and significant, which underlines the values of society where people refuse to give up control over their personal lives in government.
Returning to the refusal of the senators to include an amendment to integrate the status of conscientious objector into French law, Me Berne thinks that it is possible to invoke that this vaccine is still being tested and that its effects are therefore not well known, which is a first obstacle to making it mandatory. However, invoking this status can be complicated in France, since there is still no legal obligation.
A status that should however be possible to invoke if we manage to show that the vaccination pass is equivalent to an obligation, since it creates minorities who have lost rights. For Maître Berne, the problem lies not only in the creation of two groups of citizens in inequality, but also in the coercion that vitiates the consent, a defense that can be invoked since it amounts to a pure and simple obligation.
If this statute is still little known to citizens, Maître Snyder and Maître Berne think that there are precedents and that all the arguments are united to be taken into account by the Constitutional Council in France and by the Supreme Court in the United States, even if this legal principle is not as developed in French law as it has been in the United States.
A fascinating interview carried out in partnership with BonSens.org.