On Collective Constitutional Rights: Lessons for Religious Rights from Language Rights
(2016) 75 S.C.L.R. (2d) 31
16 Pages Posted: 16 Sep 2016 Last revised: 17 Sep 2016
Date Written: August 15, 2016
Abstract
Should institutions or communities, rather than individuals, be entitled to bear and assert religious rights? This article examines Canada’s recent jurisprudence on linguistic rights as a potential source of inspiration for answering this question, which the majority of the Supreme Court of Canada has declined to answer definitively. Recent Canadian jurisprudence has had little trouble in understanding the collective dimensions of linguistic rights, and in recognizing the institutional bodies that may assert them. It has, in fact, asserted the importance of a community's autonomy over its institutions as an aspect of linguistic rights. Admittedly, the constitutional text gives more explicit support to the collective and institutional dimensions of language rights. Nevertheless, the Supreme Court of Canada’s explanations of the why linguistic rights are best understood collectively can apply with similar force in the religious context. This lends some support to the claims that religious rights have collective dimensions that are obscured by an overly individualistic approach.
Keywords: Religious Freedom, Language Rights, Collective Rights, Institutional Rights
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