Philip Girard

Bora Laskin : bringing law to life

Introduction Part I: Starting Out 1 The Lakehead 2 Law School 3 Articling 4 Harvard 5 Waiting Part II: The Academy 6 Professor 7 Osgoode 8 Revolution 9 Federalism Part III: Extra-curricular 10 Arbitrator 11 Human Rights 12 Academic Freedom Part IV: Transitions 13 Elder Statesman 14 The Accidental Judge 15 Ontario Court of Appeal Part V: The Supreme Court of Canada 16 On to Ottawa 17 Early Promise 18 Chief Justice 19 The Laskin Court 20 The Great Dissenter 21 Architect of Public Law 22 Patriation 23 The Berger Affair 24 Final Years 25 Epilogue notes illustration credits index

The Supreme Court of Nova Scotia, 1754-2004 : from imperial bastion to provincial oracle

Prepared to coincide with the 250th anniversary of the establishment of Nova Scotias Supreme Court, this important new volume provides a comprehensive history of the institution, Canadas oldest common law court. The thirteen essays include an account of the first meeting in 1754 of the court in Michaelmas Term, surveys of jurisprudence (the courts early federalism cases; its use of American law; attitudes to the administrative state), and chapters on the courts of Westminster Hall, on which the Supreme Court was modelled, and the various courthouses it has occupied. Anchoring the volume are two longer chapters, one on the pre-confederation period and one on the modern period. Editors Philip Girard, Jim Phillips, and Barry Cahill have put together the first complete history of any Canadian provincial superior court. All of the essays are original, and many offer new interpretations of familiar themes in Canadian legal history. They take the reader through the establishment of the one-judge court to the present day - a unique contribution to our understanding of superior courts.

Themes and Variations in Early Canadian Legal Culture: Beamish Murdoch and his Epitome of the Laws of Nova-Scotia

Beamish Murdoch (1800–76) was a young man when the first of the four volumes of his Epitome of the Laws of Nova-Scotia rolled off Joseph Howes press at Halifax in the spring of 1832. He was an old man when the first installment of his three-volume History of Nova-Scotia, or Acadie appeared under James Barness imprint in the spring of 1865. These two works have received surprisingly disparate attention in the century since Murdochs death. Today it is Murdoch the historian who is well known: No treatment of nineteenth-century Canadian historiography would omit reference to his History . Murdochs contributions to literary and political life, as editor of the Acadian Magazine and member of the Nova Scotia House of Assembly from 1826 to 1830, have also attracted attention. Murdoch the lawyer and legal treatise-writer, by contrast, is virtually unknown in both professional and legal academic circles, even in his home province. Until recently the Epitome has attracted virtually no scholarly attention of any kind.

The making of the Canadian legal profession: a hybrid heritage

Abstract The Canadian legal profession emerged from the confluence of two distinct traditions: the American and the English. The colonies of British North America followed the pre-revolutionary American model of a unified legal profession, according to which all lawyers could practise as barristers and solicitors. American and Canadian lawyers pursued a client- and market-driven, eclectic type of practice that was receptive to innovations – such as the large law firm, the contingency fee, and university legal education – that were strongly resisted in England. On the governance side, however, Canadian lawyers created an indigenous but English-inflected model whereby professional self-governance was delegated to a statutorily-created body that had the power to compel all lawyers to join if they wished to practise law. With their commitment to client-centred service and strong governance, Canadian lawyers long enjoyed a cooperative and productive relationship with provincial governments, unlike the adversarial one characteristic of the United States or the long benign neglect of the legal professions by the English state. It is argued that this historical pattern may help to explain the continuing strength of the self-governance model in Canada at a time when it is being questioned and radically reformed elsewhere in the common law world.

Lawyers and Legal culture in British North America: Beamish Murdoch of Halifax

I Introduction II Antecedents III Apprenticeship IV The Legal Profession in Nova Scotia: Organization and Mobility V The Making of a Colonial Lawyer, 1822-1827 VI The Maturing of a Colonial Lawyer, 1828-1850 VII The Politics of a Colonial Lawyer: Murdoch, Howe, and Responsible Government VIII Law and Politics in the Colonial City: Murdoch as Recorder of Halifax, 1850-1860 IX Law, Identity and Improvement: Murdoch as Cultural Producer X Epilogue XI Conclusion Appendix A

Rethinking ‘the Nation’ in National Legal History: A Canadian Perspective

In 1929, when Lorna Parsons tired of her four-year marriage to a London, Ontario tailor, she decided to seek a divorce — in Reno, Nevada. Even though Lorna’s divorce was not generally recognized in Canada, obtaining it was important to her and to the hundreds, if not thousands, of Canadians who similarly sought United States divorces at a time when Canadian law was extremely restrictive. The choices of Parsons and her compatriots should be of interest to legal historians. They problematize the idea of national legal history by reminding us that law does not always remain in the tidy jurisdictional containers constructed by legal authorities and academics. National boundaries are more porous, and the nature of law itself more fluid, than we often admit.

Lawyers’ Empire: Legal Professions and Cultural Authority, 1780–1950: a review

Academics are busy people, and busy people tend to be forward thinking. We focus on the next conference, the next article, the next research project. Ironically, even those of us whose scholarship involves historical research and interpretation fall into this way of being. Whether from excessive modesty or from a sense that there is nothing ‘new’ there, we don’t excavate and re-interpret our own work often enough. That is why this collection is such a pleasure (Pue, 2016). Wes Pue has not just brought together a number of his most influential and insightful articles in this volume, but he has also reflected on them, revised them, and enriched them in light of subsequent scholarship. It is an example that all senior scholars would do well to emulate. While Wes Pue began his scholarly career by studying the nineteenth-century English bar, and in recent years has gravitated to the study of post-colonial legal professions, his mid-career research related mainly to the Canadian legal profession. With its British heritage and its North American location, Canada has always been a place of cross-currents, where inherited ideas are often faced with social and material conditions different from those of the Old World. What better place to study legal culture? And what better place to do it comparatively? Viewing the legal profession through the lens of legal culture led Pue to a number of insights. While framed in the context of the Canadian legal profession, their significance radiates outwards to the Anglo-American world. One of his main themes was precisely the importance of legal culture, at a time when many histories of the legal profession focused on market control as a primary driver of professional governance and concern. Without negating entirely the significance of market control, Pue’s work focuses on lawyers’ self-understanding and on the roles they constructed for themselves as social architects, especially during Canada’s version of the Progressive Era in the early twentieth century, when lawyers envisaged themselves “as missionaries in service of a secularized trinity: law, Britishness and civilization” (Pue, 2016, ‘Law and Colony: Making the Canadian Legal Profession’, p. 80) Only two Canadian provinces legislated the solicitorial monopoly over conveyancing that