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The Supreme Court Law Review: Osgoode’s Annual Constitutional Cases Conference

Abstract

Religious toleration has meaning only when it leads to the acceptance of decisions that one finds unpalatable or incomprehensible. Otherwise, when religious toleration only means respect for differences within a generally acceptable spectrum of options, it requires no constitutional protection. It is because a majority may feel compelled to act against a minority, may feel sufficiently irritated, repelled or dismissive of a minority that constitutional protection is needed. The article critically examines the decision in Alberta v. Hutterian Brethren as an indication a waning commitment to multicultural values. The article suggests that freedom of religion has often been interpreted as an ambivalent commitment to multiculturalism, rather than a devotion to freedom of conscience, and that as the commitment to multiculturalism is declining, so is the protection for freedom of religion.

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Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.

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