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Full-Text Articles in Law
Lest Law Forget: Locke's Toleration And Religious Freedom, Stephen Holt
Lest Law Forget: Locke's Toleration And Religious Freedom, Stephen Holt
LLM Theses
The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees every person in Canada freedom of conscience and religion. I contend that the concept of religious freedom was born out of a history of religious suffering and originally took the form of John Locke’s toleration of religious differences. In Big M, the first Supreme Court of Canada case that interpreted s. 2(a), Chief Justice Dickson recognized the historical context of religious freedom but also tied it to human autonomy, equality, and dignity. An examination of the cases since Big M suggests that when courts think in terms of tolerance, they accord greater …
Whistleblowing And Freedom Of Conscience: Towards A New Legal Analysis, Richard Haigh, Peter Bowal
Whistleblowing And Freedom Of Conscience: Towards A New Legal Analysis, Richard Haigh, Peter Bowal
Dalhousie Law Journal
"Whistleblowing" is the act or process of alerting others to scandal, danger, malpractice, corruption or other wrongdoing. In this article, the authors assert that a strongly developed freedom of conscience, distinct from freedom of religion. could contribute to the development of socially-valuable whistleblowing. While conscience is often treated as inseparable from religion, the authors suggest that the deliberate inclusion of "conscience" in s. 2(a) of the Charter implies that "conscience" ought to be recognized as an independent and robust freedom. This then provides the framework for accepting and recognizing the importance of whistleblowing and lessening its socialstigma. The article presents …
Judges And Religious-Based Reasoning, David Blaikie, Diana Ginn
Judges And Religious-Based Reasoning, David Blaikie, Diana Ginn
Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press
Is it ever acceptable for a judge in a secular liberal democracy to rely on, and explicitly refer to, religious-based reasoning in reaching a decision? While it is unlikely that many Canadian judges will be seized with the desire to include religious-based reasoning in their judgments, we raise this issue because it allows us to examine the appropriate role of religious-based discourse in a challenging context, where arguments about unconstitutionality are strongest. In a previous article, we concluded that there are no ethical impediments to citizens using such discourse in discussing public affairs. We argued that it is no less …
Religion-Based Claims For Impinging On Queer Citizenship, Bruce Macdougall, Donn Short
Religion-Based Claims For Impinging On Queer Citizenship, Bruce Macdougall, Donn Short
Dalhousie Law Journal
Competing claims for legal protection based on religion and on sexual orientation have arisen fairly frequently in Canada in the past decade or so. The authors place such competitions into five categories based on the nature of who is making the claim and who is impacted, the site of the competition, and the extent to which the usual legal and constitutional norms applicable are affected. Three of the five categories identified involve a claim that a religion operate in some form in the public area so as to impinge on the usual protection of equality on the basis of sexual …
Caesar's Faith: Limited Government And Freedom Of Religion In Bruker V. Marcovitz, F C. Decoste
Caesar's Faith: Limited Government And Freedom Of Religion In Bruker V. Marcovitz, F C. Decoste
Dalhousie Law Journal
The Supreme Court of Canada has long pursued the view that our law is somehow an expression and repository of what it terms "Canada 's fundamental values." In Bruker v. Marcovitz, the Court added to the catalogue of these judicially decreed and enforced values one concerning religion, namely, the protection of Canadians against the arbitrary disadvantages of their religions. This comment argues that the Court's judgment in this regard constitutes a fundamental threat to religious liberty inasmuch as it subordinates religious beliefand practice to state values by making the legal acceptability of the former turn on their conformity to the …