MARCKX v. BELGIUM JUDGMENT DISSENTING OPINION OF JUDGE SIR GERALD FITZMAURICE 48 consider whether, if those provisions were relevant, there would, on the facts and legal grounds pleaded, have been a breach of the Convention. Nevertheless, I want to say something of a more general character involving certain important points of principle on which my attitude in some measure differs from that of the Court. 28. Basically, the Court’s judgment constitutes a denunciation of a particular part of Belgian law as such, and in abstracto, because that law fails to provide a natural child with the civil status of being the child of its mother as from the moment and by the mere fact of birth, without the necessity of any concrete step on the part of the mother or guardian to bring that about. Although, speaking generally, it is not part of the Court’s legitimate function to incriminate the laws of member States merely because they are difficult to reconcile with the Convention, or may lead to breaches of it - (so that in the normal case it will only be the specific step taken under, or by reason of, the law, leading to a breach, rather than the law itself, that can properly be impugned) - yet I accept that where it is the law itself, acting directly, that produces, ex opere operato, the breach (if there is one), it (the law) may be impugned even though there has been no specific act or neglect on the part of the authorities, or step taken under the law: it will be the law itself that, by its very existence, constitutes the act or neglect concerned. 29. It is evidently the situation just described that would obtain in the present case if the invoked Articles of the Convention and Protocol No. 1 (P1) were applicable. The relevant part of Belgian law, by its mere existence, prevents the mother-child relationship from arising juridically (of course it is there by blood) - as a result of birth per se, and requires certain concrete steps to be taken by the mother, or by guardians acting on behalf of the child, to bring that about. As I have already fully explained, I do not think any breach of the Convention is involved by this, because I do not think these matters are matters of family life, but of affiliation and civil status with which the Convention does not deal. However, even if this were not my opinion, and even if I subscribed to the view taken on this matter in the judgment, I should still feel strongly that the Belgian Government ought not to be condemned for the operation of a law which, while some may consider it defective or inequitable, has in fact (as clearly emerged in the course of the proceedings) much that can be urged in favour of it, and in any event lies well within the margin of appreciation or discretion that any Government, acting bona fide, ought to be accorded. I fail to see how States can possibly be required to have uniform laws in matters of this kind. It is I think an exaggeration to say, as was maintained on behalf of the applicants, that the old forms of family relationships, and in particular the old distinction between legitimate and illegitimate children, are in the process of obliteration. But, in any event, States must be allowed to change their