Mandatory Retirement: Intergenerational Justice and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms
In: Canadian journal of political science: CJPS = Revue canadienne de science politique, Band 20, Heft 1, S. 149-162
ISSN: 1744-9324
AbstractThis study explores two conceptions of justice and their radically different implications for mandatory retirement. The author argues that the case against mandatory retirement rests on a conception of justice which ignores the fact that a society is composed of different generations. Yet the neglect of this seemingly trivial fact leads to serious problems of intergenerational justice; and the note considers both how these problems can be accommodated within a theory of liberal justice, and the implications of that theory for mandatory retirement. The note then considers which of these two conceptions of justice is embodied in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. It argues that to ignore considerations of intergenerational justice in mandatory retirement cases amounts to a denial of the equal protection and the equal benefit of the law guaranteed by the Charter.