Suchergebnisse

In 2008, Gerard Bouchard and Charles Taylor released an important report as Co-Chairs of the Consultation Commission on Accommodation Practices Related to Cultural Differences. The Commission was set up by the Quebec government in response to public discontent concerning «reasonable accommodation» of religious and cultural practices. In the report, four delicate issues, among others, are examined: cultural integration, collective identity, church-state relations and the most appropriate procedures for handling cultural and religious harmonization requests. Altogether, the Co-Chairs' positions propound a normative conception of sociocultural integration in a pluralist society. This conception, that may be called «interculturalism», is conceived by the commissioners as an alternative to «multiculturalism». The text examines whether interculturalism, as conceived in the report, is anything but a version of multiculturalism. The contention is that it is a rose by any other name.

In many jurisdictions, the principle of proportionality is actually used by judges as basic standard in the process of judicial review of laws limiting constitutional rights. But what is the normative foundation of the principle of proportionality ? The purpose of this text is to provide one answer to this question. In a first section, the author articulates the constitutive propositions for proportionality reasoning in constitutional adjudication. This «model of proportionality» does not presuppose a correct interpretive approach to constitutional text or a correct understanding of abstract political morality for the purposes of fixing the content of constitutional rights and the right balance of values. The analytical process is entirely contextual and pragmatic. In a second section, the author argues that the normative force of the principle of proportionality lies in two ethical or moral considerations : the moral principle of impartiality and the principle of legitimacy as unanimous acceptance of reasons justifying the exercice of power and coercion by the State. Although these considerations make the principle of proportionality very attractive from a normative point of view, the question whether they are sufficient for the purposes of judicial review is not answered.