BC Lawyers Vote Against Trinity Western Law School
Vancouver- The membership of the Law Society of BC has voted overwhelmingly 3210 to 968, directing that the Board Of Directors of the Law Society of BC , the Benchers, declare that Trinity Western University's law school is not an approved faculty of law, for the purposes of the Law Societies, admission program.
Under the Legal Professional Act , the resolution is not binding on the benchers and does not reverse the Benches decision of earlier this year , which permitted TWU's law school graduates to enter the law societies admission program.
“The decision regarding whether to admit graduates from the proposed law school at TWU is a Bencher decision,” said President Jan Lindsay, QC. “However, the Benchers will give the result of today’s members meeting serious and thoughtful consideration.”
The Benchers made their decision on April 11 after thorough review and consideration of more than 800 pages of submissions, two reports of the Federation of Law Societies of Canada, a number of legal opinions and the Supreme Court of Canada decision in a previous Trinity Western University case.
“This is a complex issue that engages many points of view,” Lindsay said. “There is currently litigation challenging the BC provincial government’s decision to approve a law school at TWU and litigation in Ontario and Nova Scotia challenging the decision by law societies there not to approve the proposed law school at TWU. Ultimately, I fully expect that the issues raised will be decided by the Supreme Court of Canada.”
Comments
TWU’s submission needs to be quashed in my opinion, until such time as they exclude their law students from that ridiculous covenant.
Sine Nomine……..
You have Gay lawyers, you have Catholic lawyers, you have Jewish lawyers, these graduates would be Christian lawyers. What seems to be the problem?
I am in favor of the Law Society of BC membership ruling today against TWU. My concerns go beyond just the Christian views of homosexuality, as much as that is relevant to this discussion and issue. I worry about the Christian definition of life as it applies to both conception and end of life events.
The Christian view / belief is that our life is not ours, it does not belong to us, and rather, life is a gift from God. This belief has ramifications relating to beginning of life abortion issues and end of life euthanasia issues. Pro-choice abortion is protected by our countryâs Charter of Rights and Freedoms, something that TWU will not support as it is a pro-life institution, and this puts TWU at odds with that application of the Charter.
Assisted suicide (euthanasia), on the other end of our life spectrum, is considered a sin by any practicing Christian, although not necessarily against the law in some countries. I would get nervous when a Christian Lawyerâs religious belief system would govern the manner in which he/she conducts an abortion or euthanasia case as opposed to him/her being governed by the rule of law.
There are of course many other areas of law where Christian beliefs would conflict with the application of law, particularly if that law were liberal in nature. For instance, many European countries have a significant Muslim population, to the extent that some Muslim customs and traditions are being recognized as legally binding in those European countries. An example would be the Talaq divorce, which is a feature of Sharia Law. The husband simply has to state the Talaq decree three times publically and he is no longer married and is considered divorced. Try applying that Sharia Law in a country dominated by a Christian belief system, while the majority rules in a democratic society, it should not justify, nor allow, a majorityâs discrimination against a minorityâs religious faith.
This is an interesting issue.
That’s right. Take an institution that wants to promote high morals and ethics and shoot them down. Lawyers don’t any of that!
Or try Christian values in a Muslim country, good luck. Can a female use the talaq decree?
No more than a female can be a Bishop or Cardinal in the Catholic Church seamut, or a woman being one of the 12 apostles (all are men). Get my drift?
Lawyers are bound to uphold the laws of the Province, including Human Rights Legislation that prohibits discrimination against groups that the Trinity Covenant discriminates against.
The Benchers decision was so clearly out of touch with their Membership and the views of the Public. Far too many gray haired old rich men from the Lower Mainland populate the Benchers; time for them to move on.
Their initial decision to accredit a law school that would sanction discrimination is embarrassing.
Not all lawyers uphold the law.. They get paid to lie and find ways around it. We need more honest and ethical lawyers in PG. As things stand now and always has been, lawyers do turn down cases based on their beliefs. It’s a small town and they meet people and turn down cases because they don’t want to call their friends liars. We complain bout our elected officials.. but lawyers are pretty sneaky on what they do and how they do it… For money, they will do whatever it takes except take on their friends.
Strange ruling.. Does not bode well for the Law Society and the lawyers in this town, since they made a point that PG was designated as a meeting place..
Human rights tribunals are about limiting the moral rights that a person is allowed to hold in public? But who is to say the lawyers that run these human rights tribunals don’t also have an agenda of their own to justify silencing a cultural norm (Christianity), and replacing it with their own (atheistic and LGBT)?
Taring down the Christian traditions and essentially outlawing their moral standards is an attack on the foundation blocks of our country.
If one wants to debate the legality of abortion, or gay marriage, or other perversions of liberality… then this should take place in a court room. Undermining the education system based on ones own beliefs whether liberal, conservative, socialist or what not is not the way of an open and fair democracy where I have a right to believe what I believe, and you have the right to believe what you believe, so long as it doesn’t involve direct harm to others.
The abortion community and the gay rights community may have protections under the law, but they do not have a mandate to enforce their level of moral standards on the rest of society that wishes to set a higher standard of human dignity.
Trying to BeingHuman wrote this, “The Christian view / belief is that our life is not ours, it does not belong to us, and rather, life is a gift from God.”
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Pure ballarney. A Christian view is that we are all unique individuals, valuable in our own ways, given a ‘choice’ in life to succeed with good morals and deserving merit, or fail in life by allowing one to believe they no longer have a purpose when they loose their way. Christian life is all about personal moral choices, and sometimes forgiveness.
A Christian view is akin to free enterprise in that a person should be given an equal opportunity to life and succeed based on ones personal merits. Its the belief system that enabled the trust in the open society we have today.
Atheist believe in no god, and therefor elevate themselves at the head of all man in the importance of their world view. Greed is a natural bi-product of atheism and fuels its immorality. An immorality that leads to the break down in trust that is essential for a modern society to operate openly without the cancer of corruption.
Yes a Christian does believe he will one day be judged by a higher power, and this if anything enables morality as it elevates the greater good to a level higher then themselves. It began with Socrates who knew he would be judged by the higher power of history when sentenced to death for his moral beliefs. These higher power judgements for mankind enables good leadership free of corruption, and is good for society when this trust is not abused.
The alternative is the state horrors of bolshevik CHEKA agents stamping out religion, religious collaborators, burning churches, and destroying the ability for society to have a moral cohesion and code in which to judge them by. Those pillars of atheism destroyed 35 million unique humans in Russia and Ukraine simply because they were Christians.
The bolshevik CHEKA didn’t respect human life in or out of the womb and certainly didn’t respect a persons right to their own life, seeing it as a gift of theirs to choose who lives and who dies based on their own immoral self serving atheistic greed. Hardly a virtue of humanism we should enable in our own legal or belief systems.
Interesting Factoid. Russia lost 22 million people in the WW2 fight against fascism, more than all other nations combined.
Yet in the atheist war against Orthodox Russia and Ukraine they lost a staggering 35 million prior to WW2 in the CHEKA sweeps, legal tribunals, starvation programs.
With history as a guide atheist are responsible for most of the worst acts of indignity against humanity and always because they believe moral judgement should never stand in the way of personal power.
There’s a difference between atheists being responsible for killings and those killings being the result of atheism. The murders committed by the Bolsheviks were not motivated by atheism but by class warfare and the desire for power.
On the other hand, what was probably the largest loss of life in history was the Muslim invasion of India, which is estimated to have brought about the murder, largely motivated by religion, of 60 million people. A less well known example is the Taiping Rebellion in China (1850-1864), in which a quasi-Christian millenarian movement caused the deaths of 20 million people. World War II was brought about by the Nazis, who were more-or-less indifferent to religion, but the leaders who brought about WWI, resulting in nine million deaths, were Christians.
I doubt that there is any difference between atheists and theists in their propensity to commit mass murder.
Good points billposer.
What if the fictional University of Islam decided to start a law school. Anyone could attend provided they signed a statement that : Mohamed is the one true prophet of God, the Koran is His holy word. Which means I couldn’t attend.
And what if we suspected their real motivation was to increase the Muslim presence in legal circles in order to implement Sharia law – we’d be pretty worried, wouldn’t we.
And in spite of all my religious freedom arguments that I’ve made, I guess I only mean religions that I don’t consider silly should have law schools.
One thing I didn’t understand, is if you have a law school, your graduates get called to the bar – there is no saying no after that, so you in fact, can produce lawyers.
So, I’m changing my vote – not because I believe TWU would produce bigoted lawyers who would hate gays – I think the opposite actually, but I fear that the precedent set here, will open the door for an outcome I do fear.
Yuh know, they could always go to the appeal hearing and call god as their star witness.
Other than that, they’re a pious bunch of fools.
Missed a few more “religious wars” billposer. Here this list should add a few million more people who have died in the name of religion!
http://godandwar.wikispaces.com/List+of+Religious+Wars
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