March 19, 2025

“Judging Religious Unfairness: A Pluralist View”

Professor Kathryn Chan

Room 2027, Osgoode Hall Law School, York University and by Zoom

Register: https://bit.ly/LRSTMar19

When religious institutions treat their members unfairly, should their actions be subject to judicial review? In a trio of cases decided between 2018 and 2021, the Supreme Court of Canada suggested the answer is generally “no”.  The public law supervisory jurisdiction applies only to exercises of state authority, the Court held, and the private law supervisory jurisdiction applies only where property or contractual rights are at stake. In this talk I criticize the categorical paradigm established in Highwood Congregation of Jehovah’s Witnesses v Wall, which immunizes powerful decision makers from judicial oversight even where they fail to follow their own rules. I argue that legal pluralism provides a superior framework for addressing challenges to practices of normative deliberation and decision making in religious and other communities.

Kathryn Chan is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Law, University of Victoria. Her research focusses on the regulation of civil society, law and religion, legal pluralism, and the public-private divide.  She is author of The Public-Private Nature of Charity Law (Hart Bloomsbury, 2016).