secularism
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Shouting into the Constitutional Void
Section 28 of the Canadian Charter and Québec’s Bill 21 Continue reading
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On the Origin of Rights
Are religious justifications for rights and equality inadmissible in Canadian politics? Continue reading
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Is Québec’s Dress Code Unconstitutional?
There is a serious argument to be made that Québec’s ban on religious symbols infringes the federal division of powers Continue reading
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A Prayer for Neutrality
This morning, the Supreme Court delivered its judgment in the municipal prayer case, Mouvement laïque québécois v. Saguenay (City), 2015 SCC 16, holding that a prayer recited by the Mayor at the beginning of the city council’s meetings, as well the municipal regulation which regulated its recitation, infringed the City’s duty of neutrality and the rights Continue reading
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Quand on se compare
Les traditions tant française qu’américaine de laïcité sont moins monolithiques qu’on ne l’a parfois prétendu. Reste qu’imposer la « neutralité » aux individus est injustifié. Continue reading
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Thanksgiving
Over at the Volokh Conspiracy, Will Baude has posted the text of a proclamation issued by George Washington, then the President of the United States, in 1789, to call for national Thanksgiving celebrations, and an excerpt from a letter written by Thomas Jefferson in 1808, when he was President, to explain his refusal to issue a Continue reading
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What to Thump
This morning the Supreme Court heard the oral argument in Mouvement laïque québécois v. Saguenay (Ville de), a case on the validity, under the Québec Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms of a municipal by-law authorizing the mayor and those municipal councillors who wish it to publicly read a prayer just prior to the official Continue reading
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Le sens de la laïcité
L’actualité a publié sur son blogue politique un billet de Frédéric Bastien appelant à la poursuite du débat sur la « laïcité » et défendant la pertinence de la Charte de la honte, alias Charte de laïcité, alias Charte des valeurs, proposée par l’ancien gouvernement péquiste. Malheureusement, comme bien d’autres interventions des partisans de cette Continue reading
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Le visage de l’oppression
Dans une décision rendue hier, S.A.S. c. France, la Cour européenne des droits de l’homme a statué que l’interdiction du voile intégral par la France n’enfreint pas la garantie de liberté religieuse de la Convention européenne des droits l’homme. Bien que les juges majoritaires soient manifestement sceptiques d’au moins certains des arguments invoqués au soutien de l’interdiction, ils acceptent Continue reading
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Cui Bono?
In a post published last week, Josh Blackman points to an important question that can help us think about the permissibility of public prayer ― not only prayer at municipal council meetings (the post’s immediate context), which the U.S. Supreme Court recently considered in Town of Greece v. Galloway (a case I briefly discussed here) and which Continue reading
Double Aspect 