Law and Religion
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Le PQ et le Tea Party
Le mois dernier, Martin Patriquin avait fait grand bruit avec une chronique publiée dans le New York Times, où il affirmait qu’avec son projet de Charte de la honte, « en courtisant cet électorat blanc, populiste, rural, le Parti québécois, un parti de gauche, semble s’être aventuré sur en territoire du Tea Party » (ma Continue reading
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The Discomforts of Religion
Religion gives law a lot of trouble. Most often, the difficult question is what to do about it ― what to do about prayer at municipa council meetings, what to do about religious believers asking for exemptions from general laws. But sometimes, the law must confront a more basic, and perhaps an even more difficult Continue reading
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The Puzzle of Neutrality
While we are waiting for the conclusion of the greatest show on earth, a.k.a. as the Supreme Court’s hearings on the Senate reference, here are a couple of thoughts on an unrelated matter ― the case in which the Court has been asked to consider the validity under the Québec Charter of Human Rights and Continue reading
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Bad Poetry
“A statute is written to entrap meaning, a poem to escape it.” So writes Hillary Mantel in Bring Up the Bodies. That’s true ― normally. But some statutes are in fact written to escape meaning rather than to capture it. They are usually bad statutes, and often bad poetry. What was first mooted as the Continue reading
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“We All Have to Compromise”
Once again, apologies for the last week’s silence. I have a good excuse for once, however: I was in Israel to participate in a workshop on the “Law in a Changing Transnational World” at the Tel-Aviv University. The workshop was very instructive, and I plan on having a few posts in the coming days and Continue reading
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Storm and Havoc
Time for more shameless self-promotion, after my rant on Thursday about not being cited by the Québec Court of Appeal. A paper of mine, called “Storm and Havoc: The Rule of Law and Religious Exemptions,” is coming out any time now in the Revue Juridique Thémis de l’Université de Montréal, a mere three years after Continue reading
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Danai Preces Legentes
Although courts in different countries are not infrequently called upon to consider similar issues, it is not very often that they do so at the exact same time. But that might be the case this year with the question the constitutionality of municipal councils opening their meetings with prayers. In Canada, the dispute concerns the Continue reading
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Eux non plus
Je voudrais revenir sur le sujet de la laïcité des représentants de l’État, dont j’ai déjà énormément parlé en lien avec la « Charte des valeurs québécoises » proposée par le gouvernement du Québec. Un aspect du débat qui entoure cette proposition que je n’ai pas abordé jusqu’à présent, c’est l’existence d’un assez large consensus Continue reading
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Undue Spiritual Influence
One of the most fascinating cases ever decided by the Supreme Court of Canada is one that you have never heard about ― or at any rate hadn’t heard about until two weeks ago, if you read Yves Boisvert’s account of it in La Presse. The case is Brassard v. Langevin, (1876-77) 1 S.C.R. 145 ― Continue reading
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Facing Justice ― English Version
I wrote last year about the Supreme Court’s decision on whether a witness in a criminal proceeding could testify while wearing a niqab, a full-face veil, R. v. N.S., 2012 SCC 72, [2012] 3 SCR 726. Of course, the questions about balancing trial fairness and freedom of religion which the Court had to confront in that case do not only Continue reading
Double Aspect 