THIS IS THE CULTURAL ENEMY THAT HAS ARISEN WITHIN.

of sedition, defamation, and incitements to criminal or sociopathic behaviour. Yet the Law Society of Upper Canada now imposes as a condition of continued professional practice, that lawyers in this country’s largest jurisdiction solemnly swear to believe not only in the equality, in legal rights, of everyone whose freedom has not been lawfully curtailed (minors, mental incompetents, undischarged criminals and so forth). We could almost all sign onto that, but lawyers must also pledge belief in the equality of everyone and of definable groups in all respects.

By some reasoning, that could be swallowed as acceptable, though many would prefer not to have aversions, there is no good reason why diversity should be unlimitedly desirable or why the desire for inclusiveness should be a condition of continued practice of a distinguished occupation with rigorous standards of admission. Both these words are subject to wide ranges of interpretation and, in requiring the profession to adhere to them, the law society is conferring capricious dictatorial powers on its own administration: the right to determine who is fit to continue in the exercise of a professional career for which a person is otherwise fully qualified.

It is possible, for example, not to desire a law firm to be exactly representative of society as a whole in pigmentation,