Essays In The History Of Canadian Law

Covering a broad range of topics, this volume examines developments over the last two hundred years in the legal profession and the judiciary, nineteenth-century prison history, as well as the impact of the 1815 Treaty of Paris.

The study of Canadian legal history has seen a remarkable growth in the past decade, nowhere more so than in Atlantic Canada. Given its early settlement and some of the liberties taken with legal procedure there - as well as some creative interpretations of English law – the region is ripe for close study in the legal history field. This new collection examines that history on 'two islands:' Newfoundland and Prince Edward Island. The essays examine legal themes, developments, and disputes, and offer a framework for comparing ways of administering justice through the courts in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The cases examined are particularly interesting for the light they throw on legal process and, especially, on the motives of the parties. Unlike in contemporary England and Upper Canada, the English precedents gave way to local needs as equitable regimes emerged that put family and community interests first, and treated all members of the family in ways tailored to their personal needs and circumstances. This volume, which includes a number of essays examining women's legal status and access to the courts, is a comprehensive and fascinating examination of legal history in two Canadian provinces.

The essays in this volume deal with the legal history of the Province of Quebec, Upper and Lower Canada, and the Province of Canada between the British conquest of 1759 and confederation of the British North America colonies in 1867. The backbone of the modern Canadian provinces of Ontario and Quebec, this geographic area was unified politically for more than half of the period under consideration. As such, four of the papers are set in the geographic cradle of modern Quebec, four treat nineteenth-century Ontario, and the remaining four deal with the St. Lawrence and Great Lakes watershed as a whole. The authors come from disciplines as diverse as history, socio-legal studies, women's studies, and law. The majority make substantial use of second-language sources in their essays, which shade into intellectual history, social and family history, regulatory history, and political history.

This fifth volume in the distinguished series on the history of Canadian law turns to the important issues of crime and criminal justice. In examining crime and criminal law specifically, the volume contributes to the long-standing concern of Canadian historians with law, order, and authority. The volume covers criminal justice history at various times in British Columbia, Ontario, Quebec, and the Maritimes. It is a study which opens up greater vistas of understanding to all those interested in the interstices of law, crime, and punishment.

The collected essays in this volume represent the highlights of legal historical scholarship in Canada today. All of the essays refer back in some form to Risk's own work in the field.

This volume, containing ten essays, is the first of two designed to illustrate the wide possibilities for research and writing in Canadian legal history and reflecting the current interests of those working in that area. Topics covered include historical aspects of company law, the law and the economy, legal reform in Ontario, custody law, the law of master and servant, the law of nuisance, origins of the Canadian Criminal Code, and women's rights in Quebec. Professor Flaherty supplies an introduction to the writing of Canadian legal history and, with his contributors, provides an important building block on which a significant tradition of indigenous legal history in Canada may grow and flourish.