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The essays in this volume reflect the exciting new directions in which legal history in the settler colonies of the British Empire has developed. The contributors show how local life and culture in selected settlements influenced, and was influenced by, the ideology of the rule of law that accompanied the British colonial project. Exploring themes of legal translation, local understandings, judicial biography, and "law at the boundaries," they examine the legal cultures of dominions in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand to provide a contextual and comparative account of the "incomplete implementation of the British constitution" in these colonies.
Scholars often accept without question that the Indian Act (1876) criminalized First Nations. In this illuminating book, Shelley Gavigan argues that the notion of criminalization captures neither the complexities of Aboriginal participation in the criminal courts nor the significance of the Indian Act as a form of law. Gavigan draws on court files, police and penitentiary records, and newspaper accounts and insights from critical criminology to interrogate state formation and criminal law in the Saskatchewan region of the North-West Territories between 1870 and 1905. By focusing on Aboriginal people’s participation in the courts rather than on narrow categories such as “the state” and “the accused,” Gavigan allows Aboriginal defendants, witnesses, and informants to emerge in vivid detail and tell the story in their own terms. Their experiences stand as evidence that the criminal law and the Indian Act operated in complex and contradictory ways that included both the mediation and the enforcement of relations of inequality.
These essays look at key social, economic, and political issues of the times and show how they influenced the developing legal system.
This is the first historical study to examine changing perceptions of sexual murder and the treatment of "sex killers" while the death penalty was in effect in Canada.
Until the late nineteenth-century, the most common form of local government in rural England and the British Empire was administration by amateur justices of the peace: the sessions system. Petty Justice uses an unusually well-documented example of the colonial sessions system in Loyalist New Brunswick to examine the role of justices of the peace and other front-line low law officials like customs officers and deputy land surveyors in colonial local government. Using the rich archival resources of Charlotte County, Paul Craven discusses issues such as the impact of commercial rivalries on local administration, the role of low law officials in resolving civil and criminal disputes and keeping the peace, their management of public works, social welfare, and liquor regulation, and the efforts of grand juries, high court judges, colonial governors, and elected governments to supervise them. A concluding chapter explains the demise of the sessions system in Charlotte County in the decade of Confederation.
A concise, elegant survey of a complex aspect of Canadian history, A Short History of the State in Canada examines the theory and reality of governance within Canada's distinctive political heritage: a combination of Indigenous, French, and British traditions, American statism and anti-statism, and diverse, practical experiments and experiences. E.A. Heaman takes the reader through the development of the state in both principle and practice, examining Indigenous forms of government before European contact; the interplay of French and British colonial institutions before and after the Conquest of New France; the creation of the nineteenth-century liberal state; and, finally, the rise and reconstitution of the modern social welfare state. Moving beyond the history of institutions to include the development of political cultures and social politics, A Short History of the State in Canada is a valuable introduction to the topic for political scientists, historians, and anyone interested in Canada's past and present.
On 18 October 1929, John Sankey, England's reform-minded Lord Chancellor, ruled in the Persons case that women were eligible for appointment to Canada's Senate. Initiated by Edmonton judge Emily Murphy and four other activist women, the Persons case challenged the exclusion of women from Canada's upper house and the idea that the meaning of the constitution could not change with time. The Persons Case considers the case in its political and social context and examines the lives of the key players: Emily Murphy, Nellie McClung, and the other members of the "famous five," the politicians who opposed the appointment of women, the lawyers who argued the case, and the judges who decided it. Rober...
On 11 November 1918, the last day of the Great War, the Canadian Corps, led by Sir Arthur Currie, liberated Mons after four years of German occupation. The push to Mons in the last days and weeks of the war had cost many lives. Long after the war, Currie was blamed by many for needlessly wasting those lives. When the Port Hope Evening Guide published an editorial in 1927 repeating this charge, Currie was incensed. Against the advice of his friends, he decided to sue for libel and retained W.N. Tilley, Q.C., the leading lawyer of the day, to plead his case. First published in 1988, The Last Day, the Last Hour reconstructs the events - military and legal - that led to the trial and the trial itself, one of the most sensational courtroom battles in Canadian history, involving many prominent legal, military and political figures of the 1920s. Now back in print with a new preface by the author, judge and legal scholar Robert J. Sharpe, The Last Day, the Last Hour remains the definitive account of a landmark legal case.
Honouring Social Justice brings together a diverse group of leading legal scholars, criminologists, and sociologists to study numerous contemporary social justice issues. In doing so, the contributors to this collection present a thorough and multifaceted portrait of recent successes and challenges of the criminal justice systems in Canada and elsewhere. Examining a broad range of vital contemporary social, judicial, and political issues, the essays in this volume pursue topics such as the targeting of marginalized groups, wrongful convictions, gender-based bias in law, government accountability, and inequalities in the application of the law to ethnic and socio-economic groups. These essays provide an illuminating introduction to the background of important social causes, and describe dedicated examples of how to effectively champion calls for social justice. Written to honour the life and work of the late Dianne Martin, a renowned scholar, lawyer, and social activist, Honouring Social Justice is an engaging and inspired series of accounts on how to improve society by leading experts from across the country.
In 1921, despite the passing of legislation intended to ease the consequences of illegitimacy for children (Children of Unmarried Parents Act), reformers in Ontario made no effort to improve the status of unwed mothers. Furthermore, the reforms that were passed served as models for legislation in other provinces and even in some American states, institutionalizing, in essence, the prejudices evident throughout. Until now, historians have not sufficiently studied these measures, resulting in the marginalization of unwed mothers as historical subjects. In Misconceptions, Lori Chambers seeks to redress this oversight. By way of analysis and careful critique, Chambers shows that the solutions to unwed pregnancy promoted in the reforms of 1921 were themselves based upon misconceptions. The book also explores the experiences of unwed mothers who were subjected to the legislation of the time, thus shedding an invaluable light on these formerly ignored subjects. Ultimately, Misconceptions argues that child welfare measures which simultaneously seek to rescue children and punish errant women will not, and cannot, succeed in alleviating child or maternal poverty.