Constitutional Roundtable with Professor Richard Moon

The David Asper Centre for Constitutional Rights’ Constitutional Roundtables are an annual series of lunchtime discussion forums that provide an opportunity to consider developments in Canadian constitutional theory and practice.  The Constitutional Roundtable series promotes scholarship and aims to make a meaningful contribution to intellectual discourse about Canadian constitutional law.

We are pleased to be hosting Professor Richard Moon for a lunchtime Constitutional Roundtable on January 27, 2026.

Title:  “The Limits of State Neutrality in Religious Matters”

Abstract: In their early Charter of Rights judgments, the Canadian courts described religious freedom as a liberty that has two dimensions – the freedom to engage in religious practice without state restriction (unless necessary to advance the public interest) and the freedom from state compulsion to perform a religious practice. However, in later cases the courts have said that the freedom does not simply prohibit state coercion in matters of religion but requires also that the state remain neutral in religious matters. Religion then must be separated from politics and treated as a private matter that falls within the sphere of personal/communal life rather than the political/civic sphere.

The courts, however, have not applied the neutrality requirement in a clear or consistent way. Behind the courts’ partial or inconsistent application of the neutrality requirement lies a complex conception of religious commitment in which religion is viewed as both an aspect of the individual’s identity and as a set of judgments or beliefs made by the individual about truth and right. The challenge for the courts is to find a way to fit this complex conception of religious commitment and its value into a constitutional framework that relies on a distinction between individual choices or commitments that should sometimes be protected as a matter of liberty, and individual attributes or traits that should sometimes be respected as a matter of equality. The constitutional framework (and perhaps more deeply, our conception of rights) imposes this distinction, between judgment and identity, on the rich and complex experience of religious commitment.

Biography:  Richard Moon is Distinguished University Professor Emeritus at the University of Windsor. His most recent books include The Life and Death of Freedom of Expression (U of T Press, 2024), Freedom of Conscience and Religion, 2^nd ed.  (Irwin Law/ U of T Press,  2024), a co-edited collection,  Indigenous Spirituality and Religious Freedom (U of T Press, 2025),  and a co-edited Open Access Constitutional Casebook, CanLii Platform (2025)(involving 43 contributors) https://canlii.ca/t/7jt2q .