Thinking about infant male circumcision after the Cologne court decision

Abstract

The Cologne regional court’s decision of 26 June 2012 criminalizing circumcisions performed on boys for non-therapeutic reasons sparked extraordinary public controversy in Germany and around the world. Though the German parliament recently responded to that decision by passing a law allowing infant male circumcision for religious reasons when performed by a trained practitioner, the Cologne court decision is instructive for thinking about the issue. First, the Cologne court correctly identified the core liberal concern about the practice: it irrevocably alters an individual’s body without his consent. Second, in unilaterally criminalizing a long-standing practice commonly accepted by liberal democracies and endorsed by the World Health Organisation, the Cologne court nevertheless showed how liberal institutions should not respond to such practices. Finally, the Cologne court decision raises broader questions about how we think – and should think – about the scope of liberal autonomy in liberal democracies.

Keywords:

• circumcision
• autonomy
• liberal democracies
• diversity

Acknowledgments

I am grateful to Vicki Dixon, Dirk Moses, Helen Pringle, and David Trigger for helpful comments on an earlier version of this article.

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Notes on contributors

Geoffrey Brahm Levey

Geoffrey Brahm Levey is an Australian Research Council Future Fellow and Associate Professor in Political Science at the University of New South Wales, Sydney. He was the foundation director of the UNSW Program in Jewish Studies. His publications include Secularism, Religion and Multicultural Citizenship (Cambridge University Press 2008), co-edited with Tariq Modood.