Fallen Tortes & Vicars

Ian Hunter on Canada’s Legal & Clerical Trials

There are ancient links between priest and lawyer, going back to the earliest development of the universities, when divinity and law were pinnacles of “science,” of scientia or knowledge. But today, lawyers are widely, and often deservedly, regarded as hired guns, shills for whatever purse can afford their services, while, by and large, clerics are utterly disregarded.

I wish to cast professional courtesy to the wind, and to say, as frankly as Jeremiah, what I think is the state of the law and the clergy, sketching my thesis only in broad brushstrokes.

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Ian Hunter is Professor Emeritus in the Faculty of Law at the University of Western Ontario. He is the author of biographies of Robert Burns, Hesketh Pearson, and Malcolm Muggeridge.

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