39 MARCKX v. BELGIUM JUDGMENT DISSENTING OPINION OF JUDGE SIR GERALD FITZMAURICE examinations, delaying and confiscation of correspondence; to the planting of listening devices (bugging); to restrictions on the use of radio and television; to telephone-tapping or disconnection; to measures of coercion such as cutting off the electricity or water supply; to such abominations as children being required to report upon the activities of their parents, and even sometimes the same for one spouse against another, - in short the whole gamut of fascist and communist inquisitorial practices such as had scarcely been known, at least in Western Europe, since the eras of religious intolerance and oppression, until (ideology replacing religion) they became prevalent again in many countries between the two world wars and subsequently. Such, and not the internal, domestic regulation of family relationships, was the object of Article 8 (art. 8), and it was for the avoidance of these horrors, tyrannies and vexations that "private and family life ... home and ... correspondence" were to be respected, and the individual endowed with a right to enjoy that respect – not for the regulation of the civil status of babies5. 8. Now it is evident that the type of complaint made by the applicants in the present case has absolutely nothing to do with the sort of thing described in the previous paragraph above. They have not been subjected to any of the practices in question, nor did they live under a legal regime according to which such practices were lawful and could at any time be put into action by the authorities. So that (compare the recent Klass case before the Court6) the mere possibility of some of them being implemented, e.g. telephonetapping, opening of correspondence, would have a concrete (because inhibiting) effect upon the applicants’ daily lives. Their complaint is the quite different one (a difference not merely of degree but of kind) that they lived under a legal regime whereby, in the case of illegitimate offspring, no legal relationship between mother and child was recognised as being automatically created by the fact of birth per se - (as opposed to the natural relationship by blood, which of course was duly recognised as existing). It was part of the complaint that this situation in various respects placed the unmarried mother and her "natural" child at a disadvantage as compared with legitimate parents and offspring, even though this could subsequently be corrected (i.e., converted into a relationship recognised in law) by means of steps easy to be taken by the mother, or taken on behalf of the child through the system of guardianship provided by Belgian law and covering This view is indirectly supported by the reference in paragraph 2 of Article 8 (art. 8-2) to "interference" by a public authority, - for while there is of course a distinction between interference and lack of respect (inasmuch as the latter does not necessarily imply the former), the existence of laws permitting, and therefore carrying a latent threat of resorting to, the practices described in paragraph 7 above, would - even if these laws were not in fact acted upon - involve a lack of respect for private and family life, home and correspondence which, if the measures concerned were put into execution, would amount to actual interferences in that sphere. The pointer is a very clear one. 6 Judgment of 6 September 1978, Series A no. 28. 5