This article discusses the role of the European Court of Human Rights in regulating the symbolic establishment of religion by the Convention States in their public sphere. The analysis starts from the rather controversial Lautsi decisions and distinguishes three perspectives on such cases. The legal perspective focuses on the way the Court would usually answer a legal question underlying a controversial subject as an interpretation of the Convention and Protocols understood as the living instrument it is today. The political perspective focuses on the preferred solution of the democratic majority in the relevant the Convention State, which is sometimes diametrically opposed to the Court’s assessment. The pragmatic perspective explains how the Court deals with such clashes. In controversial cases, the Court sometimes is critical of the state for violating Convention rights, but remains, as a supranational court, critically dependent on the sufficient support of these states. This implies that the Court is sometimes forced to act pragmatically. To maintain the overall stability of the Convention system of human rights protection, the Court is sometimes required to make legally suboptimal decisions in specific controversial cases.

中文翻译：

---

欧洲公约是否允许象征性的宗教机构？法律、政治和务实的视角

本文讨论了欧洲人权法院在规范公约国家在其公共领域象征性建立宗教方面的作用。分析从颇具争议的 Lautsi 判决开始，区分了此类案件的三种观点。法律视角侧重于法院通常会如何回答一个有争议的主题的法律问题，作为对公约和议定书的解释，该公约和议定书被理解为今天的活文书。政治观点侧重于相关公约国家民主多数派的首选解决方案，这有时与法院的评估截然相反。务实的观点解释了法院如何处理此类冲突。在有争议的情况下，法院有时会批评国家侵犯公约权利，但作为一个超国家法院，仍然严重依赖这些国家的充分支持。这意味着法院有时被迫务实行事。为了维持公约人权保护体系的整体稳定性，法院有时需要在特定的争议案件中做出法律上次优的决定。