MARCKX v. BELGIUM JUDGMENT DISSENTING OPINION OF JUDGE SIR GERALD FITZMAURICE 40 such cases. Whether the existence of such a situation would involve a breach of Article 8 (art. 8) (assuming that this provision was applicable to this type of complaint) is a distinct question with which I am not at the moment concerned. But it serves to bring me to my next point. 9. It can quite correctly be maintained that although the primary, and probably at the time the only real, object of such a provision as Article 8 (art. 8), was as described in paragraph 7 above, yet on its wording it must have a wider application to comprise any situation in which both a lack of respect and (this being the operative condition) one that is genuinely directed to the class or category of concept that includes "private and family life ... home and ... correspondence", or any one or more of these alone, provided (and this is essential of course) they are understood according to normal ideas of what they involve, and not according to some self-serving interpretation designed to produce the result that should follow from, not inspire, that interpretation. Hence, in the present case, the rights for which a lack of respect is alleged must be rights that belong to the same juridical order as those that concern private and family life, etc. This, however, is not the case here. 10. In my opinion, the juridical class or category to which the subjectmatter of the present case properly belongs is not that of "family life" at all; and the assimilation to the latter concept which the Court’s judgment effects, constitutes a distortion of both concepts. The present case is not at all about family "life" in the customary sense of that term. It essentially concerns a matter of affiliation, - and it is this, not family life, which constitutes its true character. Hence the basic category involved is one of civil status; and matters of civil status are not dealt with by Article 8 (art. 8): they do not come within its scope. 11. Matters of civil status, and matters of family life, respectively, relate to different orders of juridical concepts. It may indeed be true to say that certain matters of civil status, such as questions of affiliation, can have a private or family as well as a public aspect. But they do not in any way inherently or per fundamentum have it: they have no necessary or essential connection at all with private or family life, as such. The orders of concept involved are juridically quite independent of each other. Questions of affiliation, or other questions of civil status, can arise, and can exist, even where there is no family life at all and where the persons concerned are not living together as a family - (and this not infrequently happens). Similarly, family life can exist whatever the civil status of those resident in the common home, provided there is an inter-relationship between them by blood, adoption, or even, conceivably, of amity, convenience, or longcontinued habit. In short, ties depending on legal affiliation are in no way essential in order to bring about "the child’s integration in his family", and to enable him "lead a normal family life"- these being the tests applied in paragraph 31 of the Court’s judgment.