Javier Martinez-Torron

Javier Martínez-Torrón (Córdoba, Spain, 1955) is a Spanish jurist, Professor of Law at Complutense University of Madrid (Spain), specialized in comparative and international la won human rights, in particular freedom of religion or belief and its relationship with other fundamental rights. In September 2022 he was elected president of the International Consortium for Law and Religion Studies.
==Academic biography==
Javier Martínez-Torrón studied Law at the Universities of Seville and Granada (J.D. 1977). He obtained a Doctor’s Degree in Law at the University of Navarra (1984) as well as a Doctor’s Degree in Canon Law at the same university (1999). After his tenure as Associate Professor of Law at Complutense University (1987), he got his first Chair as Full Professor of Law at the University of Granada in 1993. In this university he founded, with other colleagues, a Seminar of Comparative Law. In 2000 he returned to a Chair at Complutense University.
In addition to his work at those Spanish universities, he has been lecturer or visiting researcher at more than ninety universities or institutions in the five continents, among them Stanford, Cambridge, Oxford, Chicago, Columbia, Berkeley, Harvard, Freiburg (Germany), Turin, Haifa, UNAM (Mexico), Catholic University of Peru, and Catholic University of Chile. Since 2001, he teaches comparative law courses at the Summer Law Program of Saint Louis University (Madrid campus).
==Institutional membership and activity==
Javier Martínez-Torrón is, since 1995, Vice-President of the Section of Canon Law and Church-State Relations of the Spanish Royal Academy of Jurisprudence and Legislation, where he founded in 2021 and co-directs, together with Professor Rafael Navarro-Valls, the Project "Conscience, Spirituality and Religious Freedom". He is, since 2022, President of ICLARS (International Consortium for Law and Religion Studies), an international scholarly institution created in 2007 which counts more than four hundred members in the five continents. In 2020 he founded, with some colleagues, Instituto para el Análisis de la Libertad y la Identidad Religiosa, Cultural y Ética, a non-profit institute devoted to the analysis of how personal religion and ethics interact with fundamental rights and State activity. 
He is also titular member of the International Academy of Comparative Law and honorary member of other legal institutions out of Spain. Among them are: the Academy of Law and Social Sciences of Cordoba (Argentina); the Latin-American Consortium for Religious Freedom; the Cambridge Institute on Religion and International Studies at Cambridge University; the Center for the Study of Law and Religion at Emory University; and the International Center for Law and Religion Studies at Brigham Young University.
Outside the academic environment, he has been member, as a renowned expert, of international and Spanish advisory bodies in the area of freedom of religion and ethics. These include the ODIHR Advisory Council on Freedom of Religion of Belief (2005-2013), the Advisory Commission on Religious Freedom of the Spanish Ministry of Justice (2002-2014), and the Committee of Bioethics of the Autonomous Region of Madrid, Spain (2004-2008). He has consulted for the governments of Mexico (National Commission of Human Rights) and France (MIVILUDES) on issues related to freedom of religion and belief. 
He has written or participated in Amicus Curiae briefs for the European Court of Human Rights, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, and the United States Supreme Court. He also writes and speaks frequently in the media on issues regarding the role of religion and conscience in public life.
==Work and recognitions==
He is co-founder and co-editor, with Rafael Navarro-Valls, of the Revista General de Derecho Canónico y Derecho Eclesiástico del Estado (2003), the first electronic legal periodical in Spain specialized on Church-State relations and canon law. He is also a member of the editorial or scientific boards, among others, of Ecclesiastical Law Journal (Cambridge University Press); Oxford Journal of Law and Religion; Jus; Revista Latinoamericana de Derecho y Religión; Diritto e religioni; Journal of Sociology of Law and Religion.
In 1998, his work Le obiezioni di coscienza: profili di diritto comparato, written in co-authorship with Rafael Navarro-Valls, was awarded the Arturo Carlo Jemolo Prize, which a consortium of Italian universities confer on the best book published in Italian on issues relating to freedom of religion and conscience or Church-State relations. His monograph Los testigos de Jehová y la cuestión de los honores a la Bandera en México, published by the Mexican National Commission on Human Rights in 2000, served as the basis for the recommendations given by that official body to address the problems caused by the refusal of young Jehovah’s Witnesses to perform the customary flag salute ceremony in public schools in Mexico.
Javier Martínez-Torrón is s strong defender of freedom of conscience, on the basis that religion and ethics are parte of each person's identity. When personal moral duties collide with legal obligations he supports the idea that public authorities must provide a sound reason to justify that they cannot accommodate conscience claims, especially when those claims are in relation to the protection of human life (as in the administration of death penalty, military service, performance of abortions and euthanasia). He is one of the original signatories of the Punta del Este Declaration: Human Dignity for Everyone Everywhere. 
==Bibliography==
Among his most influential books are: 
* Objeciones de conciencia y vida humana: el derecho fundamental a no matar (ed., with María José Valero-Estarellas), 2023
* COVID-19 y libertad religiosa (co-ed., with Belén Rodrigo), 2021
* Libertad religiosa, neutralidad del Estado y educación. Una perspectiva europea y latinoamericana (ed., with Santiago Cañamares), 2019
* Religion and Law in Spain (2ª ed.), 2018, wich is part of the International Encyclopædia of Laws published by Wolters-Kluwer
* Great Christian Jurists in Spanish History (ed., with Rafael Domingo), 2018
* Tensiones entre libertad de expresión y libertad religiosa (ed., con Santiago Cañamares), 2014 
* Conflictos entre conciencia y ley. Las objeciones de conciencia (2ª ed.), 2012, written in co-authorship with Rafael Navarro-Valls, and published simultaneously in Spain and Mexico 
* Religión, matrimonio y derecho ante el siglo XXI (ed., with Silvia Meseguer and Rafael Palomino), 2013 
* Religión, derecho y sociedad, 1999
* Anglo-American Law and Canon Law. Canonical Roots of the Common law, 1998 
* Separatismo y cooperación en los acuerdos del Estado con las minorías religiosas, 1994
Category:1955 births	
Category:People from Córdoba, Spain
Category:Spanish people
Category:Spanish jurists
Category:Professors