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Equal, But Only Conceptually: Explaining The Phenomenon Of Religious Losses In Contemporary Canadian Constitutional Cases Involving Conflicting Rights, Mike Madden

Dalhousie Law Journal

If there is no hierarchy of rights in Canada, then why does freedom of religion so often seem to lose in cases of conflicts with other rights? This article discusses five recent Canadian cases (involving same-sex marriages, controversial medical practices, the wearing of a niqab, and a Christian university’s sexual conduct policy) in order to expose how the courts regularly characterize freedom of religion as being conceptually equal to other rights, before ruling against freedom of religion on the facts of the particular cases. This phenomenon within Canadian rights jurisprudence is then justified within the article by reference to a …