ABSTRACT
Originally an act of resistance against the illegitimate or unjust use of power, the appeal to conscience has gradually become a widespread instrument of legal and political contestation in the hands of minorities and has, therefore, attracted an increasing interest among political philosophers, wishing to making sense of it and exploring the range and limits of its justification. Conscience has been repeatedly invoked as the source of a number of requests for differential treatment across Europe: pacifists contesting the duties to serve in the military; medical doctors opposing to perform abortions or to engage in acts of physician-assisted suicide; pharmacists refusing to sell the ‘morning-after pill’; scientific laboratory technicians contesting tests on animals; as well as members of religious groups claiming for differentiated days of rest from work or dress codes in public are but some examples of the many forms that the appeal to conscience has taken in contemporary European democracies.1
