THE ADVOCATE 95
VOL. 80 PART 1 JANUARY 2022
UVIC LAW
FACULTY NEWS
By Kathryn Chan*
LAW AND RELIGION AT UVIC
Research tells us that religious institutions are in decline, and that the number
of people who claim to have no religion is climbing. Yet these patterns
do not entail the disappearance of religion from private or public life.1 Spiritual
beliefs and practices continue to evolve in Canada, and to coexist with
nonbelief and the secular. Difficult questions arise when that coexistence
gives rise to conflict. Where should we draw the boundary separating
church and state in a religiously diverse society such as Canada? Does religious
freedom protect choices that may have an adverse impact on third
parties? How should religion itself be defined and understood?
LAW AND RELIGION SCHOLARSHIP AND PUBLIC DEBATE
The UVic Faculty of Law has a distinguished record of engaging with these
types of questions. Past and present professors, including interim dean Val
Napoleon, John McLaren, Jeremy Webber, Hamar Foster, Gillian Calder
and John Borrows, have engaged in scholarly and public debates on conflicts
involving religious or spiritual practices, and on the scope of religious
freedom. In 2013, Professor Emerita Mary Anne Waldron, Q.C., made a
major contribution to the literature on s. 2(a) of the Canadian Charter of
Rights and Freedoms with the publication of her book Free to Believe: Rethinking
Freedom of Conscience and Religion in Canada (University of Toronto
Press, 2013). Former UVic Professor Benjamin L. Berger made another
major contribution in 2015 with the publication of his influential book Law’s
Religion: Religious Difference and the Claims of Constitutionalism (University
of Toronto Press, 2015).
* Kathryn Chan is an associate professor at UVic Law.