How you react to the Trinity Western decision may depend on your religious beliefs

For the past few years, the best-known law school in Canada has arguably been one that doesn't exist.

After a Supreme Court of Canada ruling this month, it will likely never exist — at least, not in the foreseeable future.

The Supreme Court ruled that the law societies of Ontario and British Columbia can refuse to accredit a proposed law school at Trinity Western University. That's because the Christian university in Langley, B.C. requires its students to sign what it calls a community covenant — one that forbids sex outside heterosexual marriage.

The majority opinion stated that it was "proportionate and reasonable" for the law societies to curtail religious freedoms in the name of ensuring the rights of LGBTQ students.

But while opponents of the proposed law school hailed the decision for affirming diversity and the rights of marginalized minority groups, others have decried it as a blow to freedom of religion — and to the diversity of opinion and morality.

The fight over Trinity Western's plans for a law school highlights the tensions that arise when freedoms conflict with each other in a liberal democracy.

It also opens one of the most complex and nettlesome questions in the discourse of human rights — when the freedom to live by one's religious beliefs impinges on another person's rights and freedoms, which right takes precedence?

Carissima Mathen is one of this country's leading constitutional scholars. She's a Vice Dean and Professor of Law at the University of Ottawa. She teaches constitutional law and comparative civil liberties. She joins host Michael Enright from the CBC studio in Ottawa.

Click 'listen' at the top of the page to hear Michael's interview with Carissima Mathen.