More on Trinity Western University's Law Program

Late in 2013 I posted here on my personal blog about the good news that Trinity Western University in British Columbia had received final approval from the Canadian Federation of Law Societies (Canada's equivalent of the American Bar Association) to offer a degree in law. TWU's application had sparked some vitriolic opposition by those for whom a commitment of its students and faculty to abstain from “sexual intimacy that violates the sacredness of marriage between a man and a woman" proved offensive. The Federation of Law Societies was able to see through such small-minded opposition and approved the application.

But, as I warned in December, "one might suspect that there will be challenges to provincial approval and later attempts to bar TWU's graduates from admission to the bars of some provinces." It took less than a month for the Law Society of Alberta to bear out my suspicions. While I don't have a link to the letter sent by Carsten Jensen, president of the Society, to its members, go here to read the measured, cogent response by TWU's president, Bob Kuhn.

While I struggle to teach my students that law is not the same as politics, folks like Carsten Jensen make it increasingly to do so with integrity. The banal philosophy of Legal Realism, which asserts that the law is nothing more than a judge's political predilections, has spread outside its original American habitat and is creeping north. Let's hope that Alberta's practicing bar eliminates this noxious weed and supports TWU's right to be a Christian university that teaches law.