The Law Commission of Canada鈥檚 research initiative Charity and Law in Canada聽explores how Canadian law defines, supports, and regulates charitable activity. The project is divided into three parts: a historical inquiry (鈥淟ooking Back鈥�), an assessment of current legal challenges (鈥淟ooking Around鈥�), and an examination of future directions for reform (鈥淟ooking Ahead鈥�). The first phase focuses on the legal and institutional history of charity in Canada, including the evolution of charitable concepts across common law, Quebec civil law, and Indigenous legal traditions.
Prof. Dedek, as an Associate of the Law Commission of Canada, will contribute to Part I of the project鈥斺�淟ooking Back: Tracing Charities in Canada and Charity in Canadian Law鈥濃�攗nder Category 1, which explores the historical and contemporary understanding of charity across Canada鈥檚 legal traditions. His contribution, with the working title 鈥淎gape, Caritas, Love: The Roots of 鈥楥harity鈥� in the Western Legal Tradition,鈥� examines how concepts such as charity, benevolence, mercy, and beneficence have historically been treated as extralegal, standing apart from the domain of justice. It traces how legal traditions in the West developed a framework in which charitable action was viewed as a matter of individual conscience or religious virtue rather than legal obligation, and explores the long-term consequences of this separation for the legal treatment of charity today.