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Blair A. Major
Assistant Professor
LLB (Alberta), LLM (McGill), DCL (McGill)
Prof. Blair Major is an associate professor at the TRU Faculty of Law. His primary area of research and writing is on the topic of law and religion in both the Canadian and international contexts, and includes a mix of legal theory and substantive doctrinal analysis. Blair’s recent work has focused on the idea of human dignity and its use in constitutional and international human rights law, especially in relation to religious freedom. His work has appeared in a variety of Canadian law journals, including recent papers published in the Supreme Court Law Review (2024), the Osgoode Hall Law Journal (2022), and the Canadian Yearbook of International Law (2022).
Blair holds law degrees from the University of Alberta (LLB) and McGill University (LLM, DCL). Blair received a Joseph-Armand Bombardier Canada Graduate Scholarship Doctoral Award from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada to support his doctoral research.
Blair joined TRU Law in 2018. He currently teaches courses on Administrative Law, Law and Religion, and Remedies.
Publications
- “The Dignity of Religious Freedom” (2024) 2 Supreme Court Law Review (3rd) 3.
- “Recovering the dimensions of dignity in religious freedom: protecting religious proselytization in international human rights” (2022) 60 Canadian Yearbook of International Law 64.
- “The Law’s Apprehension of Religion as a Legal Fiction” (2022) 59:3 Osgoode Hall Law Journal 767.
- “All the Voices of Religious Freedom” (2022) 105 Supreme Court Law Review (2d) 285.
- Book review: Dia Dabby, Religious Diversity in Canadian Public Schools (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2022), (2024) Canadian Journal of Law and Society, 1-3, doi.org/10.1017/cls.2023.19.
- Book review: Heather Sharkey & Jeffrey Green, eds, The Changing Terrain of Religious Freedom (Pittsburgh: Penn Press, 2021), (2023) 38:2 Journal of Law and Religion 1-4.
- “Making Something New: Legal Education in a Pandemic” in Shauna Van Praagh & David Sandomierski (eds), Collage sur le droit et le savoir en temps de pandémie / Law and Learning in the Time of Pandemic - A Collage, (2020) 25–4 Lex-Electronica, pp. 93-98, online
- “Religious proselytization in Canadian law: the residue in the periphery” (2020) 98 Supreme Court Law Review 2d 213.
- “Book review: Seth D Kaplan, Human Rights in Thick and Thin Societies: Universality Without Uniformity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018)” (2018) 11 International Journal for Religious Freedom 133-137.
- “Translating the Conflict over Trinity Western University's Proposed Law School” (2017) 43:1 Queen’s Law Journal 175.
- “TWU Law: The Boundary and Ethos of the Legal Community” (2017) 55:1 Alberta Law Review 167.
- “Religion and Law in R v NS: Finding Space to Re-think the Balancing Analysis” (2015) 32:1 Windsor Yearbook of Access to Justice 25.
Conferences
- June 2021, “Law and Religious Communities in COVID-19.” Canadian Law and Society Association Annual Conference.
- June 2019, “Law and Religion: A Friendly Conversation” at the Canadian Law and Society Association Annual Conference, UBC Peter A. Allard School of Law, Vancouver BC, June 2019.
- May 2017, McGill Graduate Law Students Association Annual Graduate Law Conference, McGill Faculty of Law.“Ktunaxa Nation v BC: Looking for the Evolution of Religious Freedom in Canada.”
- June 2016, “The Trinity Western University Law School Proposal: Exploring the Relationship between TWU and the Law Societies of Canada as an Interaction Between Communities.” Law and Society Association Annual Conference, New Orleans LA.
- May 2016, “The Trinity Western University Law School Proposal: Considered as an Opportunity for Community Building.” Canadian Law and Society Association Annual Conference, Calgary AB.
- May 2015, “‘Perfect Strangers:’ the Study of Law as Religion.” UBC Interdisciplinary Legal Studies Graduate Student Conference, UBC Peter A Allard School of Law, Vancouver BC.
- May 2014, “Religion and law in R v NS: Finding Space to Re-think the Balancing Analysis.” Osgoode Forum: Law, Dissent and Power, Osgoode Hall Law School graduate student conference, Toronto ON.
