The Limits of Belief: Freedom of Religion, Secularism, and the Liberal State

Canadian Journal of Law and Society

Volumn 17, Issue 1, 2002, Pages 39-68

  Berger, Benjamin ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF VICTORIA   (Canada)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 85011525637     PISSN: 08293201     EISSN: 19110227     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0829320100006992     Document Type: Article

References (34)

1. Brassard et al. v. Langevin, [1877] 1 S.C.R. 145 at 153 [hereinafter Brassard], 5
2. S.C.R.at l61. Canadian Journal of Law and Society / Revue Canadienne Droit et Société, 2002, Volume 17, no. 1, pp. 39–68 XSXS.
3. For a more thorough examination of the topic, see Keith Tester's rich and fascinating book, Civil Society (London: Routledge, 1992). By way of introduction, Tester writes that “civil society is about [the] fundamental experiential and relational connection between individuals going about their own lives and members of society doing what they are told. The point is, of course, that those individuals and members of society were, and to some extent continue to be, actually one and the same” (at 5). He canvasses the varied and sometimes conflicting thought about the nature of civil society. He considers the perspectives of Locke, Hobbes, Marx, Hegel, Rousseau, and a raft of other sociologists and political philosophers. For a consideration of the discourse around civil society in recent decades, see E. Gellner, Conditions of Liberty (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1994).
4. Rosen concedes that “'[l]iberalism’ and ‘liberal’ are protean terms especially among historians of political ideas. Where there is an attempt to discern a single liberal tradition, even in Britain, there is little agreement over what its main features are and which writers best represent its principles.” F. Rosen, Bentham, Byron, and Greece: Constitutionalism, Nationalism, and Early Liberal Political Thought (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992) at 289.
5. Dicey's formulation of the rule of law has been both a mould for and foil to many developments in Canadian law. He saw the rule of law as requiring (1) that law not be imposed arbitrarily, (2) that all persons are equally subject to the law, and (3) that constitutional law is “the result of the ordinary law of the land.” A. V. Dicey, Introduction to the Study of the Law of the Constitution 10th ed. (London: MacMillan, 1967) at 202–03.
6. D. Held, “Democracy: From City-states to a Cosmopolitan Order?” in Goodin, Robert E. and Pettit, Philip, ed. Contemporary Political Philosophy: An Anthology (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1997) 78 at 82.
7. J. Rawls, Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996) at 10–11 [hereinafter Political Liberalism].
8. These crucial theoretical shortcomings are not particular to Rawls but, rather, are endemic among conventional liberal visions of justice. For example, although his conception of liberalism differs from Rawls’ in some substantial ways, including a compelling and sophisticated dialogic vision, Ackerman, nevertheless, employs his Neutrality principle to demand that any reasons generated to vindicate political authority must be void of conceptions of the good. (B. A. Ackerman, Social Justice in the Liberal State (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1980) at 11, 43–45.)
9. Political Liberalism, Social Justice in the Liberal State 13 at 176.
10. C. Taylor, “The Politics of Recognition” in C. Taylor, Philosophical Arguments (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995) 225 at 245–6.
11. C. Taylor, “Liberal Politics and the Public Sphere” Philosophical Arguments. 257 at 257–58.
12. A. J. Heschel, God in Search of Man: A Philosophy of Judaism (New York: Noonday Press, 1955) at 293.
13. A. J. Heschel, Man is Not Alone: A Philosophy of Religion (New York: Noonday Press, 1951) at 237.
14. C. Taylor, “Charles Taylor Replies” in James Tully, ed. Philosophy in an Age of Pluralism: The Philosophy of Charles Taylor in Question (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994) 213 at 48.
15. J. B. White, “Talking About Religion in the Language of the Law: Necessary but Impossible” (1998) 81 Marquette Law Review 177 at 200.
16. J. Chaplin, “Beyond Liberal Restraint: Defending Religiously-Based Arguments in Law and Public Policy” (2000) 33 U.B.C. L. Rev. 617 at 626.
17. J. Von Heyking, “The Harmonization of Heaven and Earth?: Religion, Politics, and Law in Canada” (2000) 33 U.B.C. L. Rev. 663 at 668.
18. P. L. Berger, “The Deserialization of the World: A Global Overview” in P. L. Berger, ed. Deserialization of the World: Resurgent Religion and World Politics (Grand Rapids: W.B. Eerdmans, 1999) 1 at 2.
19. Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, s. 27, Part I of the Constitution Act, 1982, being Schedule B to the Canada Act 1982 (U.K.), 1982, c.l 1.
20. I. T. Benson, “Notes Towards a (Re)definidon of the ‘Secular'” (2000) 33 U.B.C. L. Rev. 519.
21. T. F. Hoad, Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986).
22. Code of Cannon Law Annotated (Montreal: Wilson & Lafleaur, 1993).
23. C. Taylor, “Understanding and Ethnocentricity” in Philosophy and the Human Sciences: Philosophical Papers 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985) 116 at 125–6.
24. R. v. Big M Drug Mart, [1985] 1 S.C.R. 295 [hereinafter Big M].
25. R.B. v. Children's Aid Society of Metropolitan Toronto, [1995] 1 S.C.R. 315 at par. 109–110 [hereinafter R.B.].
26. Trinity Western University v. British Columbia College of Teachers, [2001] 1 S.C.R. 772 at par. 29 [hereinafter TWU], quoting with approval from P.(D.) v. S.(C), [1993] 4 S.C.R. 141 at 182.
27. See Malette v. Schulman (1990), 67 D.L.R. (4th) 321 (Ont. C.A.).
28. Young v. Young, [1993] 4 S.C.R. 3 [hereinafter Young].
29. S.C.R. 52.
30. D.L.R. at par. 13.
31. Zylberberg v. Sudbury Board of Education (1988), 52 D.L.R. 577 (Ont. CA.) [hereinafter Zylberberg].
32. R.S.O. 1980, c. 129.
33. School Act, R.S.B.C. 1996, c. 412, s. 76(1).
34. A. de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, v. 1, 3rd ed. trans. Henry Reeve (Cambridge: Sever and Francis, 1863) at 397–398.