Chapter 14. Student Rights to Religious Freedom and to Free Speech on Religious Topics

2009 ◽  
pp. 163-173
Keyword(s):  
Free Speech ◽  
Religious Freedom ◽  
Student Rights

scholarly journals Compelling Freedom on Campus: A Free Speech Paradox

2020 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 5-18
Author(s):  
Jamie Cameron*
Keyword(s):  
Free Speech ◽  
Working Group ◽  
Religious Freedom ◽  
Law School ◽  
Professor Emeritus ◽  
Supreme Court Of Canada ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Indirect Control ◽  
Course Of Action ◽  
The Supreme Court

In 1985, it was largely unknown how the Supreme Court of Canada would respond to the Charter.1 At first glance, a drugstore’s right to be open for business on Sunday, selling groceries, plastic cups, and a bicycle lock, seemed an unlikely source of inspiration for the Court’s first pronouncement on the essence of freedom. Perhaps unexpectedly, the justices enforced the entitlement, finding that a Sunday closing law compelling a corporation to comply with the Christian Sabbath infringed section 2(a)’s guarantee of religious freedom.2 In doing so, R v Big M Drug Mart defined freedom as “the absence of coercion or constraint,” stating without equivocation that no one who is compelled “to a course of action or inaction” is “truly free”.3 In Justice Dickson’s considered view, coercion includes “blatant forms of compulsion”, such as “direct commands to act or refrain from acting on pain of sanctions”, as well as forms of indirect control.4 In plain and unmistakeable terms, Big M promised that, under the Charter, “no one is to be forced to act in a way contrary to his beliefs or conscience”.5   * Professor Emeritus, Osgoode Hall Law School. I thank Kate Bezanson and Alison Braley-Rattai for includingme in this special issue of Constitutional Forum, and am grateful to Kate Bezanson for her comments onan earlier draft. I also thank Ryan Ng (JD 2021) for his valuable research assistance in the preparation ofthis paper. Finally, I note that I was a member of York University’s Free Speech Working Group in fall 2018.This paper does not in any way express the views of York University or the Working Group, which has longsince disbanded. 1Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, s 2(a), Part I of the Constitution Act, 1982, being Schedule B of the Canada Act 1982 (UK), 1982, c 11 [Charter].2R v Big M Drug Mart, [1985] 1 SCR 295, 18 DLR (4th) 321 [Big M].3Ibid at 336.4Ibid.5 Ibid at 337.

United States: Exceptional Freedoms, Fabricated Fears

Hate Spin ◽  
2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cherian George
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Free Speech ◽  
Religious Freedom ◽  
Hate Speech ◽  
The United States ◽  
Legal Framework ◽  
Constitutional Protections ◽  
High Degree

The United States has exceptionally strong Constitutional protections for free speech, but also for religious freedom. This chapter considers how this unique legal framework affects hate spin in the country. It finds that although hate speech can be expressed with a high degree of impunity, strong anti-discrimination laws limit the harms caused by such speech. Hate spin can, nonetheless, succeed in fostering fear and cultivating prejudice against minorities. The chapter examines how a network of anti-Muslim activists have used hate spin to campaign against mosque building, to oppose multi-cultural textbooks, and to introduce legislation protecting states from the fabricated threat of encroaching Muslim law. Beyond their stated goals, which may be frustrated by courts, these campaigns often have the symbolic purpose of spreading Islamophobia.

Senior Teachers’ Learning About Student Rights

2021 ◽  
pp. 002248712110000
Author(s):  
Lotem Perry-Hazan ◽  
Liron Neuhof
Keyword(s):  
Professional Development ◽  
Free Speech ◽  
Learning Experience ◽  
Student Rights ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Bottom Up ◽  
Teachers Perceptions ◽  
Perceptions Of Students ◽  
Participation Rights ◽  
Rights Consciousness

The study explores the rights consciousness of senior teachers who participated in a student rights professional development (PD) course and designed educational projects during the course. It analyzes teachers’ perceptions of students’ rights and the influence of the PD and other factors on these perceptions. The data included interviews with 17 teachers and an analysis of their projects. One cluster of teachers held a top-down perception of students’ rights, conveying a contrastive approach to rights reflecting students’ autonomy. The second cluster of teachers held a broader perception, which included bottom-up mobilization of students’ free speech and participation rights, conveying a supportive approach to these rights. The teachers’ projects did not reflect these patterns, limiting their focus to rights already embedded in school. Furthermore, the teachers did not report their learning experience as transformative. Rather, they applied their newly acquired knowledge and thinking frameworks to support their existing moral perceptions and practices.

scholarly journals Government Nonendorsement

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nelson Tebbe
Keyword(s):  
Free Speech ◽  
Religious Freedom ◽  
Due Process ◽  
Establishment Clause ◽  
Common Belief ◽  
Free Society ◽  
Political Morality ◽  
The Government ◽  
First Time ◽  
Equal Citizenship

98 Minnesota Law Review 648 (2013)What are the constitutional limits on government endorsement? Judges and scholars typically assume that when the government speaks on its own account, it faces few restrictions. In fact, they often say that the only real restriction on government speech is the Establishment Clause. On this view, officials cannot endorse, say, Christianity, but otherwise they enjoy wide latitude to promote democracy or denigrate smoking. Two doctrines and their accompanying literatures have fed this impression. First, the Court’s recent free speech cases have suggested that government speech is virtually unfettered. Second, experts on religious freedom have long assumed that there is no Establishment Clause for secular ideas. So today there is a common belief that government is free to endorse secular ideas. But that belief is mistaken. In this Article, I argue that in fact the Constitution properly imposes a broad principle of government nonendorsement. That principle cuts across multiple provisions — including equal protection, due process, and free speech itself — and it shows how they work together to prohibit endorsements that abridge full and equal citizenship in a free society. Situations where official expression runs up against such limitations include racialized speech, electioneering, same-sex marriage exclusions, political gerrymandering, and messages concerning reproduction. Through analysis of these examples, I establish the requirement of government nonendorsement for the first time. Furthermore, I argue that appreciating the constitutional limits on official endorsement leads to new contributions to theoretical debates surrounding political morality, free speech, and religious freedom.

scholarly journals From the Bench

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 24
Author(s):  
David R. Stone
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
Free Speech ◽  
Religious Freedom ◽  
Church And State ◽  
Book Publishing ◽  
Colleges And Universities ◽  
Equal Protection ◽  
Net Neutrality ◽  
Campaign Financing

Supreme Court, Libraries, Schools, Colleges and Universities, Book Publishing, Internet, Social Media, Free Speech, Prisons, Government Speech, Privacy, Church and State, Equal Protection vs. Religious Freedom, Net Neutrality, Campaign Financing

How Constitutional Rights Matter

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adam Chilton ◽  
Mila Versteeg
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Political Parties ◽  
Free Speech ◽  
Trade Unions ◽  
Religious Freedom ◽  
The United States ◽  
Constitutional Rights ◽  
Religious Groups ◽  
Survey Experiments ◽  
The Government

How Constitutional Rights Matter explores whether constitutionalizing rights improves respect for those rights in practice. Drawing on global statistical analyses, case studies in Colombia, Myanmar, Poland, Russia, and Tunisia, and survey experiments in Turkey and the United States, this book advances three claims. First, enshrining rights in constitutions does not automatically ensure that those rights will be respected in practice. For rights to matter, rights violations need to be politically costly, which can happen when citizens mobilize against governments that encroach upon their rights. Successfully resisting the government, however, is no small feat for unconnected groups of citizens, and governments can often get away with constitutional rights violations. Second, some rights are more likely to be enforced than others. The reason is that some rights come with natural constituencies that are able to mobilize for their enforcement. This is the case for rights that are practiced by and within organizations, or “organizational rights,” such as the rights to religious freedom, unionize, and form political parties. Because religious groups, trade unions, and political parties are highly organized, they are well equipped to use the constitution to resist rights violations. Indeed, we find that these organizational rights are systematically associated with better practices. By contrast, rights that are practiced on an individual basis, such as free speech or the prohibition of torture, usually lack constituencies to enforce them, which makes it easier for governments to violate them. Third, even highly organized groups armed with the constitution face an uphill battle. Although such groups may be able to successfully resist repressive practices, they often can only delay governments that are truly dedicated to rights repression.

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