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Repression and abuse are not just for the movies. A civil war is now unfolding inside the Law Society of Ontario and at stake is the liberty to think and speak for yourself. This spring, 22 new “benchers” were elected to Convocation, the Law Society’s governing body, to attempt to repeal the Law Society’s now infamous “statement of principles” (SOP) policy that compels lawyers and paralegals to endorse the ideology of identity politics as a condition of their licences. Other benchers are determined to preserve the obligatory pledge and protect the existing order. In the name of social justice, they are showing the newcomers their place.

The Law Society’s infamous 'statement of principles' policy compels lawyers and paralegals to endorse the ideology of identity politics

The “StopSOP” (“Stop the Statement of Principles”) benchers, who won 22 of 40 lawyer seats and received more votes than any other candidates, come from a variety of political and cultural persuasions (left, right, liberal, conservative, secular, religious) and are united only in their conviction that the regulator must not compel fealty to political preferences. Yet two days after the results were announced, Michael Lerner, a former bencher who lost his seat in the election, told the Toronto Sun that the new benchers were “right-wing, fundamentalist religious zealots” who would target professional regulation against abortion and gays.

When the 22 reformers nominated for Treasurer (the head of Convocation) one of their own — a fearless civil rights advocate who, years earlier, had represented notorious holocaust denier Ernst Zundel in his challenge to Canada’s security certificate legislation — a whisper campaign spread the word that she must be a Nazi sympathizer. Jonathan Rosenthal, a Toronto lawyer and former bencher, who narrowly failed to be re-elected, told the Globe and Mail that while everyone is entitled to a vigorous legal defence, “repeated representation of such people and such causes … that is what causes me great and significant concern.” Yet Rosenthal would be unlikely to accept the proposition that lawyers who repeatedly defend drunk-driving cases, as Rosenthal has, must therefore support drunk driving.