Back To Law Matters | Summer 2015

Let Trinity Western University Have its Law School

Robed and gowned the ordained, those initiated in dogma, petition the altar beseeching the higher power for redress, mercy, benediction or relief against iniquity.  Congregants attend seated in wooden pews watching ancient ceremony and pageantry stretching back to antiquity. They listen to formal language, archaic English and Latin terms few now understand. 

The higher power represents one third of the Constitutional Trinity; the judiciary which must act as a bulwark against the overreaches of the executive or the legislative branches of government.

It’s easy to confuse our judicial and legal processes to those of the Christian church. Our profession and our tradition has its roots deeply grounded in the soil of Christianity.  In fact, judicial administration began with the Old Testament. Verses 13-27 of Chapter 18 of Exodus are an early example of considerations of institutional structure and operational continuity: 

Moreover thou shalt provide out of all the people able men, such as fear God,…of truth, hating, covetousness; and place over them, to be rulers of thousands, and rulers of hundreds, rulers of fifties, and rulers of tens.

Lawyers, following this tradition, have put able men (and women) to govern them and rule them in the form of Benchers of their Law Societies. The ostensible mandate of the Societies is to protect the public interest. However, the Law Societies have collectively focused on the providers of legal services rather than the consumers. It`s time for reform along the lines of the United Kingdom (the Clementi Report), but this is not likely. These Societies -- which have struggled with their actual mandate now seek additional powers to regulate the admission of individuals in law school (aimed squarely, and solely, at TWU’s covenant that enjoins every student to restrict sexual intimacy with their opposite sex marital partner). 

The actual task that they are mandated with is one that they have discharged in a confused, chaotic, inefficient and bumbling manner. In this case, the Societies in their non-religious fervour and zealotry have far overstepped their mandate, which is to focus on protecting the public interest by errant members of the society. 

But when they continued asking him; he lifted up himself, and said unto them, He that is without sin, let him first cast a stone at her. John 8:7

No matter. Undeterred by their questionable moral high ground, Societies across the country have lined up to deny the admission of law graduates because of a religious, private covenant. 

The priority now is to deny TWU graduates eligibility for admission and for the Societies to protect their monopoly over the profession. The Societies have crossed the Rubicon and become little Caesars eager to expand their powers to regulate to the social values of lawyers in Canada. They now bestride this narrow world like a Colossus with little regard for little men and women, mere aspirants to the practice of law, and will be the arbiters of acceptable values that lawyers are to hold. 

These little Caesars also, grudgingly, allow the admission of foreign trained, NCA accredited lawyers. Surely, they must realize that some of these foreign lawyers come from countries that have differing social values than ours. Like the Christian God, the eyes of the Societies “are in every place, beholding the evil and the good” (KJV, Proverbs 15:3). Perhaps additional hurdles will be placed over these suspect newcomers to the profession.

But the legal professionals who are part of this crusade that have donned the breastplate of righteousness have recently suffered a setback. The Nova Scotia Barristers’ Society (NSBS) amended its definition of “law degree” in its regulatory provisions to exclude degrees from a law school that discriminated in its admission criteria. Justice Campbell found that the NSBS overstepped its authority in Trinity Western University v Nova Scotia Barristers’ Society, 2015 NSSC 25. Perhaps Justice Jamie Campbell said it best in his recent decision: 

The Charter is not a blueprint for moral conformity. Its purpose is to protect the citizen from the power of the state, not to enforce compliance by citizens or private institutions with the moral judgments of the state.

Unfortunately, this will not be the final word.

Irony abounds with the efforts of such Societies to regulate religious institutions that provide legal education within the context of their tradition without regard to the separation of church - as this too is an ideal which was expressed by Jesus the Christos, allowing the possibility of the rule of law to take root and to flower.  

And Jesus answering said unto them, Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s. And they marvelled at him. KJV, Mark 12:17. 

Obviously freedom of religion also means the freedom from religion, however, the Supreme Court, in 2001, has already dealt with reconciling the competing rights engaged in this matter. 

Members of the bar must be representative of the communities that make up Canada, and that means we must allow the admission of Christians practicing the values that they have defined for themselves. 

As lawyers we are trained to detect logical fallacies. The “stars of heaven” will not fall “unto the earth” (KJV, Revelation6:13) and the imagined slippery slope will not emerge if we allow some five dozen Christians trained in a Christian school admission in our ranks of sinners every year. 

The Societies should confine themselves to improving their governance and ensuring that lawyers are fit to practice. If the institution produces graduates that are not competent or fit or fail to serve the public then the Law Society must take action. But the opprobrium of the Societies is more than misplaced and the aggrieved righteousness smacks of hypocrisy, or some kind of psychological projection.

In the Old Testament, a goat was symbolically laden with the collective sins of the Israelites by their high priests and sent into the desert to die. Have our high priests anointed TWU as the scapegoat to bear our sins and be destroyed? 

Enough. Allow TWU their institution and grant their graduates entrance to the practice of law.