Supreme Court of Canada to Review Religious Divorce

The most recent issue of The Lawyer's Weekly reports that the Supreme Court of Canada will hear a case on December 5, 2006 of a Jewish woman who sued her ex-husband for "allegedly blighting her chances to remarry within her faith when he broke his contractual pledge to her to consent to a religious divorce."

According to the article entitled Withholding ghet permission to be reviewed by Supremes, the issue in this specific case is part of a list of "current religious/secular conflicts over the propriety of polygamy, same-sex marriage and the use of traditional faith-based laws like Sharia to resolve family and civil disputes".

Earlier Library Boy posts about the intersection of religion and secular law:

Laïcité 1905-2005: Centenary of the Separation of Church and State in France (December 12, 2005): "Last Friday, December 9, marked the 100th anniversary of the passing of the French law creating an active separation of Church and state, a concept known as "laïcité" and that is often translated as secularism."

Ontario Bans Sharia Arbitration (February 17, 2006): "The provincial government of Ontario passed legislation this week that bans the use of binding religious arbitration to settle family law matters, like divorce and child custody. The government was driven to pass the law by a public pressure campaign that took off last year against the possibility that a controversial set of Muslim rules and guidelines known as sharia would be used under the Arbitration Act, 1991."

Religious Law Guide (February 17, 2006): "The Guide offers an introduction to religious law with sections covering Islamic law, Jewish law, Christian Canon law, Hindu law, Buddhist Law and Confucian Law. Each section provides essential facts as well as details of Web, book and article sources available. There is also a list giving details of how religious law is implemented in a number of jurisdictions."

Monthly Newsletter on Law and Religion (March 12, 2006): "The French law blog Doc en Vr@c mentions La Lettre du droit des religions, a monthly online bulletin on law and religion produced by Sébastien Lherbier-Levy since late 2004. Each issue includes an editorial comment, a feature article, news items from France and the European Union, case law from the European Court of Human Rights (and domestic case law from French tribunals) as well as a bibliography."

Update to Monthly Newsletter on Law and Religion (September 27, 2006): "The most recent issue of the newsletter (Aug.-Sept. 2006) covers an interesting array of stories about reports, legislative proposals and court decisions in France and other countries and at the level of the European Court of Human Rights on topics such as religious cults, the wearing of religious symbols by public employees, the right of the media to print anti-religious caricatures or to broadcast documentaries criticizing practices of specific religious groups, etc."

Quebec Government Creates Committee on Religious/Cultural Diversity in Schools (October 11, 2006): "The Quebec Minister of Education, Jean-Marc Fournier, announced today that he is creating a consultative committee on diversity in the province's schools whose primary task will be to come up with 'a clear and accessible definition of what is a reasonable accommodation' between the needs of children from cultural and religious minorities and the values of the officially secular public education system."