Clement on Human Rights in Newfoundland

Also in the winter/spring issue of Acadiensis, University of Alberta sociologist Dominique Clement looks at the application of human rights policy in twentieth century Newfoundland, in "Equality Deferred: The Origins of the Newfoundland Human Rights State":

Canada has constructed the most sophisticated human rights legal regime in the world, and yet local conditions have determined the emergence and implementation of human rights law. Newfoundland is an ideal case study. The government's lackluster support for human rights policy demonstrates how governments can inhibit the application of law. In addition, the predominance of sex discrimination complaints offers a unique insight into the dynamics of gender inequality during this period. Finally, this case study demonstrates the critical role that social movements have played in implementing human rights law in Canada, which has historically depended on the participation of non-state actors. 

Le Canada s'est doté du régime de protection des droits de la personne le plus perfectionné du monde, et pourtant les conditions locales ont conduit à l'émergence et à la mise en œuvre de lois sur les droits de la personne. Terre-Neuve en fournit un exemple typique. L'appui médiocre du gouvernement terre-neuvien à la politique des droits de la personne illustre comment les gouvernements peuvent restreindre l'application du droit. De plus, la prédominance des plaintes pour discrimination sexuelle jette un éclairage particulier sur la dynamique des inégalités entre les hommes et les femmes durant cette période. En dernier lieu, cette étude de cas met en lumière le rôle crucial exercé par les mouvements sociaux dans la mise en œuvre de lois sur les droits de la personne au Canada, qui historiquement a été conditionnée par la participation d'acteurs non étatique

Ackerman on the abortion debate in NB in the 1980s

Katrina R. Ackerman, "Not in the Atlantic Provinces": The Abortion Debate in New Brunswick, 1980-1987, in the winter/spring issue of Acadiensis:

Correspondence between Premier Richard Hatfield's Progressive Conservative government and pro-choice and pro-life activists indicates that regionalism and religion were central to the pervasiveness of pro-life ideology and the rejection of pro-choice arguments between 1980 and 1987. Despite statistical evidence that proved abortion services were inaccessible, the government received assistance from the medical community to pass anti-abortion legislation that prohibited abortion clinics and appeared to maintain the status quo. This article provides a regional perspective on the history of abortion in Canada, but it more importantly probes how religious and cultural beliefs shaped politics and society. ]

La correspondance entre le gouvernement progressiste-conservateur du premier ministre Richard Hatfield et des militants pro-choix et pro-vie indique que le régionalisme et la religion étaient au cœur de l'idéologie pro-vie omniprésente et du rejet du mouvement pro-choix entre 1980 et 1987. Malgré des données statistiques prouvant que les services d'avortement n'étaient pas accessibles, le gouvernement a reçu l'aide de la communauté médicale pour adopter une loi contre l'avortement, qui interdisait les cliniques d'avortement et semblait maintenir le statu quo. Cet article offre une perspective régionale sur l'histoire de l'avortement au Canada mais, ce qui est plus important, il examine comment les croyances religieuses et culturelles ont façonné la politique et la société. 

Ranasinghe on Vagrancy as a Penal Problem in late nineteenth century Canada

In the December 2012 issue of the Journal of Historical Sociology, "Vagrancy as a Penal Problem: The Logistics of Administering Punishment in Late-Nineteenth-Century Canada" by University of Ottawa criminologist Prashan Ranasinghe

There exists a voluminous literature on the history of vagrancy and vagrancy legislation. However, virtually all of its focus has been on the manifestations of vagrancy as a social problem. What has not received attention is another important aspect to this history, one that finds its roots and geneses directly out of its construction as a social problem. This is the problem associated with the logistics surrounding the administration of punishment within correctional institutions, what I call vagrancy as a penal problem. The day-to-day operations of the criminal justice system, especially that part which was responsible for the administration of punishment, were immensely burdened because of the sheer number of vagrants who came through the system. This created logistical problems with respect to housing, classifying, maintaining and regulating prisoners, and especially with respect to vagrants, putting them to hard labour. This paper seeks to elucidate the penal problem of vagrancy by narrating the voices of the personnel who worked in correctional institutions.

Bailie on Violet King in CJWL

In the same issue of CJWL as Backhouse on the history of Sexual Harassment, Rachel Bailie has an article entitled "Minority of One: Violet King's Entry to the Legal Profession."

Violet King est née en 1929 à Calgary, en Alberta. Elle était la fille aînée de John King qui avait quitté l'Oklahoma pour le Canada en 1911 avec sa famille et un groupe d'immigrants noirs. En 1911 et 1912, en raison de l'intolérance du public et du gouvernement, le Canada limitait à moins de 2 000 le nombre total d'immigrants noirs dans les Prairies canadiennes. Lorsque Violet s'est inscrite à l'Université de l'Alberta à Edmonton en 1948, elle était la seule étudiante noire. Violet a assumé un rôle actif de leader à l'université et au conseil étudiant.

Après avoir obtenu son diplôme en 1953, Violet est revenue à Calgary pour faire son stage de droit chez un éminent avocat de la ville. En 1954, elle fut la première avocate noire admise au barreau de l'Alberta et la première avocate noire au Canada. Elle s'est ensuite installée à Ottawa, en Ontario, pour travailler au ministère fédéral de la Citoyenneté. Elle est ensuite partie aux États-Unis pour travailler avec le YMCA (Young Men's Christian Association). En 1976, elle fut nommée directrice principale au Conseil national du groupe de développement organisationnel du YMCA, devenant ainsi la première femme occupant un poste de haute direction dans cet organisme national américain.

Violet King was born in Calgary, Alberta, in 1929, the eldest daughter of John King who moved from Oklahoma with his family in 1911 as part of a group of Black immigrants to Canada. Public and government intolerance in Canada limited the total number of Black immigrants to the Canadian prairies in 1911 and 1912 to fewer than 2,000. When Violet enrolled at the University of Alberta in Edmonton in 1948, she was the only Black woman student. Violet took an active leadership role in school activities and student government.

After her graduation in 1953, Violet returned to Calgary to complete her articles of clerkship as a student-at-law with a prominent Calgary lawyer. In 1954, Violet was admitted to the Alberta Bar as the first Black lawyer in Alberta and the first Black woman lawyer in Canada. Violet moved from Calgary to Ottawa, Ontario, to work for the Citizenship Department with the federal government. She later moved to the United States to work with the Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA). In 1976, she was appointed executive director of the National Council of YMCA's Organizational Development Group-the first woman named to a senior management position with the American national YMCA organization.

Backhouse on sexual harassment in CJWL

Constance Backhouse is both source and analyst for " Sexual Harrassment: A Feminist Phrase that transformed the Workplace," Canadian Journal of Women and the Law, now online.

Le présent article est une autobiographie de la coauteure du premier ouvrage canadien sur le harcèlement sexuel. Tout en admettant que ses souvenirs soient fragmentaires, elle relate certains des événements qui ont entouré les premiers efforts féministes visant à éradiquer le harcèlement sexuel en milieu de travail. L'article décrit les événements qui ont précédé la publication de l'ouvrage de Constance Backhouse et de Leah Cohen intitulé The Secret Oppression: Sexual Harassment of Working Women et la fureur du public à la sortie du livre. L'article porte sur l'ensemble du contexte social, politique, économique et culturel entourant le débat concernant le harcèlement sexuel et montre dans quelle mesure les changements exigés ont apporté des améliorations concrètes.

This article is a first-person memoir from a co-author of the first Canadian book on sexual harassment. It attempts to recount, from one individual's admittedly partial memory, some of the events that surrounded the early feminist efforts to eradicate sexual harassment in the workplace. It tracks the events that culminated in the publication of Constance Backhouse and Leah Cohen's The Secret Oppression: Sexual Harassment of Working Women (Toronto: Macmillan, 1978) and the public furor that greeted the book's arrival. It focuses on the wider social, political, economic, and cultural context surrounding the debate over sexual harassment and tries to analyze to what extent concrete improvements arrived upon the heels of the demands for change.

Chambers on Canadian Legal Historiography

It was about time we had a new article about Canadian legal historiography, and thanks to Lori Chambers and Acadiensis (again! is this the fifth or sixth? they certainly hold the title) for providing it.

Here's the abstract for "Exposing the Myth of the Peaceable Kingdom: Trends and Themes in Recent Canadian Legal History."

The article discusses recent trends in Canadian scholarship on the topic of legal history. Topics mentioned include sexual assault trials in which women with disabilities were the plaintiffs, poor and marginalized black defendants in Ontarian courts, and judicial independence in the British Empire from 1800 to 1900. The author argues that the examples raised disprove the idea of Canada as a truly neutral legal haven for all, and that unless Canada truly faces the inequities in its past, it will never achieve justice in the present.

Legal History Group Winter 2013 Schedule

Here's the schedule for the Osgoode (formerly Toronto) Legal History Group. Another great line-up:

January 16 - Patricia McMahon, Osler Hoskin: "The Courts and Conscription: The Case of George Edwin Gray, 1918."

January 30 - TBA

February 13 - Alain Beaulieu, Universite de Quebec a Montreal: "The Acquisition of Aboriginal Land in Canada: The Geneaology of an Ambivalent System, 1713-1867"

February 27 - Patrick Connor, York University: "Crime and Punishment in Upper Canada"

March 6 - Joan Sangster, Trent University: "Just Horseplay? Defining Masculinity in Grievance Arbitration During the Fordist Accord."

March 13 - Barry Wright, Carleton University: ""Macaulay's India  Law Reforms and Labour in the Nineteenth Century British Empire"

March 27 - Brad Miller, Queen's University and UBC: "An Imperial Union: Defining & Re-Defining Marriage in the Nineteenth Century British Empire."

April 3 - David Schorr, University of Tel Aviv: "Jerusalem-Jaffa District Governor v Murra and Four Imperial Constitutionalisms"

Forthcoming: Animal Law History in Jan 2013 UTLJ

Forthcoming in the January 2013 issue of the University of Toronto Law Journal:

Focus Feature: Foxes, Seals, Whales and the Rule of Capture: Animals in the Law and Legal History. 

The publishers' blurb:

The common-law rule on the capture of wild animals is often cited by law and economics scholars to demonstrate the superiority of clear rules over vague or "fuzzy" standards. In countless property law courses, the famous fox hunt case, Pierson v. Post (1805), is used to support the "catch it and kill it if you can" view of property: mere pursuit of a wild animal is insufficient to establish possession. Where "hot pursuit" might have been sufficient according to the sportsman's custom, escape was always possible, and the law preferred certainty. In this forthcoming focus feature edited by Angela Fernandez (Law, University of Toronto), four scholars spanning law and history challenge this rules v. standards approach to the rule of capture, demonstrating that, understood historically, the situation is much more complicated and interesting - which wild animal, which type of hunting, in what period all turn out to be important.

Bruce Ziff (Law, University of Alberta) explores the way that late nineteenth-century Newfoundland courts wrestled with the conflict between the rule of capture and a local practice of "deemed abandonment" for seal pelts. Discussing whale hunting, long understood as a place where the law defers to various customs, Robert Deal (History, Marshall University) argues that these customs have been distorted by many, from the great novelist Herman Melville to the law and economics scholar Robert Ellickson. Angela Fernandez traces how Pierson v. Post came into the American law school casebooks and explains the successive meanings given to the case by twentieth-century legal scholars, including its use in the rules v. standards debate. Christopher Tomlins (Law, University of California (Irvine)) provides a comment on the three articles.

Several articles from this special focus feature are now available on
University of Toronto Law Journal Advance Online

The Entitlements of Unallied Hunters After a Sequential Capture

Robert C Ellickson

DOI 10.3138/utlj.63.1.ellickson

Fuzzy Rules and Clear Enough Standards: The Uses & Abuses Of Pierson V Post

Angela Fernandez

DOI 10.3138/utlj.63.1.fernandez

The Judicial Invention of Property Norms: Ellickson's Whalemen Revisited

Robert Deal

DOI 10.3138/utlj.63.1.deal  

Richardson on Regulation Competition in Accounting

Alan J. Richardson of the Schulich School of Business, York University, writes in the March 2011 issue of the Accounting History Review on "Regulatory competition in accounting: A history of the Accounting Standards Authority of Canada."

Another one for the low law fans and those interested in the 1980s. As I think I have mentioned before, I don't understand why accounting and auditing are not given more attention by legal historians. Other than maybe that accounting, like math, is hard :). And kind of dry. With statistical models. And likely to be published in journals that are out of the usual ambit of legal academics and historians.... 

But for the very smart, hardy, or economically trained, there's this.

This article examines a unique period (1981-1998) in Canadian accounting standard-setting history when, nominally, two competing standard-setting bodies existed: the Canadian Institute of Chartered Accountants and the nascent Accounting Standards Authority of Canada. Sunder (2002a, 2002b) advocates competing accounting standard-setting regimes within a single jurisdiction to allow firms to voluntarily select standards that reflect their business model and provide the lowest cost-of-capital. This situation, however, is rare and has not been examined empirically. The existence of competing standards assumes the existence of competing standard-setters, but the entry of a new standard-setter into the domain of an existing standard-setter faces numerous obstacles. The analysis of this case suggests some factors missing from Sunder's model. 

Fanning on Mounties as Social Bonding Agents, Confederation to WWI

Fans of legal pluralism and low law may be interested in this one.

Soren Fanning of Robert Morris University, "Forging a Frontier: Social Capital and Canada's Mounted Police, 1867–1914" in the December 2012 issue of American Review of Canadian Studies.

This article examines the role of the North West Mounted Police in creating communities in the Canadian Prairies during the first decades of Confederation. Despite being created as an institution of law enforcement, the Mounted Police acted more often as a social bonding agent, creating the necessary conditions and organizations required to establish permanent communities otherwise isolated from one another. As the only federal presence in the frontier, the force evolved into an autonomous institution of cultural stability, performing vital services and advocating for frontier objectives to the government in Ottawa.

Room change for launch of "Law Books in Action"

Please note a change of room for the book launch for "Law Books in Action," edited by Angela Fernandez and Markus Dubber. The launch, originally to be held in the Rowell Room, Flavelle House, U of T Faculty of Law, will now be held in the Faculty Common Room, same building. The time and date remain the same: Thursday, November 29, 2012, 7 pm.

Two legal history articles in December, 2012 issue of CHR

The table of contents for the upcoming issue of the Canadian Historical Review shows two articles with a legal history slant.

Dan Malleck of Brock University writes on "The Same as a Private Home? Social Clubs, Public Drinking, and Liquor Control in Ontario, 1934–1944" :

 

Along with regulating the sales of liquor in provincial stores, overseeing the manufacture of alcohol, and inspecting the public drinking establishments in the province, the Liquor Control Board of Ontario issued beverage licences to private clubs. This paper examines the challenges of regulating the activities of drinkers in semi-private spaces and asks how the lcbo applied the notion of public space to establishments that were not entirely public. The legislation permitting drinking in clubs appears to have been based upon a narrow idea of the elite social club. The administrators of the board quickly found that the residents of the province saw socialization in a variety of forms. In keeping with its regulatory activities in the public drinking establishments, the lcbo attempted to address individual challenges and problems based upon the unique characteristics of each club. It assessed club management, the type of clientele, and the activities of the club. It then evaluated whether certain transgressions or special dispensations would present a challenge to social order. In effect, the nuanced evaluation and careful application of the rules characterized the regulation of semi-private drinking in the province of Ontario. The article argues that, in contrast to Habermas's idea that the development of a public sphere resulted in freer public discussion and debate, in the lcbo regulatory activities, the term public implied an added responsibility to behave in certain constrained ways. At least when having a drink.
 

And Ruth Frager of McMaster and Carmela Patrias of Brock write on "Human Rights Activists and the Question of Sex Discrimination in Postwar Ontario":

This article examines the varied understandings of human rights in Ontario in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War. The article compares the social origins and implementation of Ontario's Fair Employment Practices Act – which combatted racist and religious discrimination – with Ontario's Female Employees Fair Remuneration Act – which mandated equal pay for women who did the same work as men. Although a few feminists called for the Fair Employment Practices Act to prohibit sex discrimination as well, their pleas fell mainly on deaf ears in this period. Men and women who fought against racist injustice were frequently unaware of gender injustice, for they, like so many others, subscribed to the deeply embedded ideology of the family wage. Conversely, some of the most outspoken advocates of women's rights were unconscious of – or chose to ignore – racism. At the same time, some of the most committed advocates of equal pay for equal work actually reinforced certain conventional assumptions about men's gender privilege at work and at home. Moreover, while the enforcement of both acts was constrained by the conciliatory framework embedded within them, the government officials who were charged with applying both acts interpreted the equal pay act quite narrowly and were significantly more diligent in tackling racist and religious employment discrimination.

Knepper on history of Canadian research into human trafficking

The U of T press has made "History Matters: Canada's Contribution to the First Worldwide Study of Human Trafficking" by Paul Knepper, forthcoming in volume 54 of the Canadian Journal of Criminology and Criminal Justice/La Revue canadienne de criminologie et de justice pénale available for purchase in advance of publication.

Here's the abstract:

Despite the attention given to the issue of human trafficking, the empirical base for policy making remains problematic. During the 1920s, the League of Nations pioneered research into human trafficking with the first intercontinental study. Field work took place in 28 countries across Europe, the Americas, and the Mediterranean; researchers conducted 6,500 interviews in 14 languages. The fieldwork conducted in Canada, the first and last country to be studied, reveals a great deal about human trafficking research today. The researchers encountered problems familiar to current researchers and their official report contains many of the same conclusions. The discussion here explores the unreliability of statistical estimates, difficulties in researching hidden populations, the lack of cases meeting a legal standard, and claims about the involvement of organized crime. It concludes with comments about the importance of incorporating historical perspective into criminology.

Osgoode Society launches four books

Yesterday in Toronto the Osgoode Society for Canadian Legal History launched its four books for 2012. The President, R. Roy McMurtry, and the Editor-in-Chief, Jim Phillips, addressed the gathering, as did the authors of the two monographs--Blake Brown and Shelley Gavigan, the editor of one essay collection, Barrington Walker, and one of the co-editors of the other collection, Bruce Ziff. Every speech was enjoyable (and short!) and the usual fine time was had by all. (We do look forward to Bruce Ziff's next publication with the Society, as he will no doubt be required to perform on the banjo in addition to or in lieu of his launch speech.)

The books for 2012 are as follows (note the titles of all have changed from what was announced on the Society's website):

The Members' book, received free by members  (memberships and non-member book order forms here) is Arming and Disarming: A History of Gun Control in Canada by R. Blake Brown, published with the University of Toronto Press.







     "Optional extras" for the year are

Hunger, Horses and Government Men: Criminal Law on the Aboriginal Plains, 1870-1905, by Shelley A. M. Gavigan, published with UBC Press,












The African Canadian Legal Odyssey: Historical Essays, edited by Barrington Walker published with U of T Press,













and last but not least, Property on Trial: Canadian Cases in Context, edited by Eric Tucker, James Muir and Bruce Ziff, published with Irwin Law

Here's the Table of Contents for the latter volume (the ToC for the other collection is not yet in available for cut and paste purposes):

James Muir, Introduction

Bruce Ziff, The Law of Capture, Newfoundland Style

Eric H. Reiter, Nuisance and Neighbourhood in Late Nineteenth-Century Montreal: Drysdale v Dugas in Its Contexts

Jamie Benidickson, KVP: Ontario’s Riparian Resurrection

Philip Girard, Cottages, Covenants and the Cold War: Galbraith v Madawaska Club

Vanessa Gruben, Angela Cameron and Angela Chaisson, “The courts have turned women into slaves for the men of this world”: Irene Murdoch’s Quest for Justice

Eran Kaplinsky, The Zoroastrian Temple in Toronto: A Case Study in Land Use Regulation, Canadian Style

Jim Phillips and Jeremy Martin, Manitoba Fisheries v. The Queen: The Origins of Canada’s De Facto Expropriation Doctrine

Eric Tucker, The Malling of Property Law?: The Toronto Eaton Centre Cases, 1984-1987 and the Right to Exclude

Margaret McCallum, Morgan and Jacobson v. Attorney General for Prince Edward Island

C. Ian Kyer, Reginav. Stewart: Is Information Property?

Nicholas Blomley, Begging to differ: Panhandling, Public Space, and Municipal Property

Patricia L. Farnese, Pirate or Prophet? Monsanto Canada Inc. v Schmeiser

Douglas C. Harris, A Railway, a City, and the Public Regulation of Private Property: CPR v City of Vancouver

Mary Jane Mossman, Afterword–Private Property and the Public Interest: (Re)Telling the Stories of Principles, Places and Parties

Congratulations to John Beattie!

U of T emeritus professor John Beattie added to his impressive list of honours and recognitions when it was announced at the American Society for Legal History conference in St. Louis that he has been elected an honorary fellow of the Society.
Well-deserved (and maybe just a tad overdue?)
Congratulations, John, from everyone at the Osgoode Society and the Osgoode Legal History Group!

Updated (Room Change): Book launch and Round Table (with Special Guests!) for Fernandez and Dubber, Law Books in Action

UPDATED--ROOM CHANGE: Please note that the book launch scheduled for this Thursday evening will be held in the Faculty Common Room, Flavelle House, not the Rowell Room as previously announced.


A while ago I posted about an exciting collection of essays on the history of the Anglo-American legal treatise, "Law Books in Action" published by Hart and edited by U of T's Angela Fernandez and Markus Dubber.

Angela advises that there are some great sounding events planned around the book, to which everyone interested is invited.

First, there are special guests! Three prominent legal historians will be joining the celebration: Morton Horwitz (Harvard Law School); Bob Gordon (Stanford Law School); and Susanna Blumenthal (University of Minnesota, Faculty of Law).

On Thursday November 29 at 7:00 pm., there will be a book launch in the Rowell Room (Flavelle House, U of T Faculty of Law.) Copies of the book will be available for sale and authors will be on hand.

The next day, Friday November 30 from 10:30-12, in the Solarium (Falconer Hall, U of T Faculty of Law) the editors and guests will participate in a roundtable discussion providing commentary on and reactions to the book.

This is a terrific collection, and it's wonderful to see it getting this attention and support. I hope to see many of you at both events.

Mawani, "Law's Archive" on SSRN

Renisa Mawani of the Department of Sociology at UBC has posted "Law's Archive" on SSRN. The paper will appear in volume 8 of the Annual Review of Law and Social Science.

Here's the abstract:

The archival turn has followed a long, protracted, and spiraled trajectory through the fields of history, historical anthropology, philosophy, and literary studies. Animated by the cultural turn and shaped by the challenges of poststructuralism, subaltern, and postcolonial studies, critics have formulated history's archive not solely as a repository of sources through which to retrieve and/or assemble the past but as an uneven effect of power and a set of contested truth claims through which history itself has been a site of struggle. Law and legal studies, by contrast, have had curiously little to say on the subject. That the archive has been the topic of such vibrant debate and disagreement outside of law but not within it is a problematic that informs this review. This article revisits the spirited and now familiar debates in history and these other fields and asks how these critical engagements—which have yet to fully dislodge the archive as truth or radically change how we write history—might productively inform conceptualizations of law's archive. Given law's significance to historical, contemporary, and future struggles over sovereignty, authority, violence, and nonviolence, its archive, I argue, cannot be broached as a compendium of sources or as a regime of power/knowledge alone. Rather, law is the archive. It is an expansive and expanding locus of juridico-political command, one that is operative through what I term a double logic of violence: a mutual and reciprocal violence of law as symbolic and material force and law as document and documentation. Law's archive is a site from which law derives its meanings, authority, and legitimacy, a proliferation of documents that obscures its originary violence and its ongoing force, and a trace that holds the potential to reveal its foundations as (il)legitimate.

British Colonial Legalities: Two Panels in Search of Papers

British Colonial Legalities: Two Panels in Search of Papers

British Colonial Legalities
CRN 15
Law & Society Association Meeting 2013
Boston 30 May to 2 June

The LSA&#8217;s deadline is upon us and who would want to miss the Boston LSA? We have two rather exciting panel proposals here &#8211; does your work fit? Please email Yael Berda by 20 Nov if it does:"Yael Berda" <yaelberda@gmail.com>,

Perhaps you too have an idea and are looking for others to form a panel with? Please take advantage of being on the British Colonial Legalities email list!

And please do send this on to others who might find it useful.

Please note that LSA has strict rules on participation this time round and we can only really be on one panel or roundtable.

Best wishes from
Wes, Binyamin and Jothie.


Panel One: Organiser Yael Berda, Princeton.
Colonial legal practicalities - the mundane daily work of colonial rule

Law in the colonies was not only a juridical template constructed in London and proliferated throughout the empire. Rather, it was a patchwork of local and British laws, ad hoc regulations, judicial decisions and administrative decrees that made up the complex daily life of governance in and of the colonies. In this panel we explore legal practices in the colonies: bureaucratic and administrative practice, lawyers&#8217; practices and practices of the subjects that used the law as a form of resistance to colonial rule in order to provide a richer, deeper account of the life of the law in the British colonies.
Panel Two: Organiser: Yael Berda, Princeton.

Law, Geopolitics, Populations

Population movements, partitions, transfers and displacements took place in British colonies during colonial rule and following decolonization. Laws, judicial decisions and legal definitions of citizens and subjects played an important part in the geopolitical re-designing of the British empire and its post colonies This panel focuses on the relationship between law, geopolitics and populations in the colonies and post colonies.


LSA&#8217;s Call for papers at www.lawandsociety.org/boston2013.html

Dostie and Dupre on 1898 prohibition referendum

New in Explorations in Economic History (Vol. 49 Issue 4) an article, '"The people's will": Canadians and the 1898 referendum on alcohol prohibition' by economists Benoit Dostie and Ruth Dupré.

Here's the abstract, the last line of which made me laugh out loud. Economists, what can you say? But as an empircally based case study on a referendum, this seems as though it could be quite useful to legal historians interested in law reform and/or alcohol regulation or the role of religion in law making.

The 1920s American alcohol prohibition is notorious but not unique. Quite a few countries went through a vigorous struggle. But it is in Canada in 1898 that the very first national referendum on prohibition in the world took place. In this article, we focus on this rare and neglected event in Canadian history, in which the government came close but finally did not impose prohibition. In our empirical analysis, we use census district-level data to investigate how the shares of Yes, No and Abstentions vary according to four sets of factors: religious, demographic, social and economic. Our results confirm the literature on temperance and prohibition with religion [Evangelicals against Catholics and Anglicans] as the key explanatory variable, followed by the heterogeneity of the population, measured by the proportion of foreign-born. Urbanization has also the expected (although small) impact. Results for wealth are mixed. The economic interest rationale is not confirmed but that can be explained by the historical context.

Chambers on Married Women and Businesses in Ontario

Lori Chambers has extended her interest in Ontario married women's property law reform to examine its consequences for married businesswomen. Her new article "Married Women and Businesses" appears in the fall 2012 issue of Ontario History (not yet online.) The Ebscohost listing for this article does not include the author's name, but this is Lori. Here's the abstract:

Married women's property law reform in the nineteenth century made it legally possible for wives to run businesses independently of husbands.

However, marital property law reform as interpreted by the courts of Ontario still conceptualized the wife as a dependent partner in marriage who owed labour and services to her husband.

A woman's ability to run a business on her own account was limited by the rules assigned to married women's property ownership, and her labour in a family business was constructed as a labour of love, performed for the benefit of family, and to the profit of her husband.

Women faced significant challenges in obtaining credit and maintaining ownership of enterprises.

By examining Ontario cases in which wives sought to control the assets from their businesses, this paper explores the limitations of reform, and asserts not only that business is not gender neutral, but also that understanding law is essential to understanding why women have been marginalized in the business community and business history

Life and times of Kwakwaka'wakw activist Jane Constance Cook (1870-1951)

And another, published this summer, a life and times style biography from UBC Press, Standing Up with Ga'axsta'las: Jane Constance Cook and the Politics of Memory, Church, and Custom by anthropologist Leslie Robertson and the Kwagu’l Gixsam Clan.  Order here.

Says UBC press:

Standing Up with Ga'axsta'las is a compelling conversation with the colonial past initiated by the descendants of Kwakwaka'wakw leader and activist, Jane Constance Cook (1870-1951). Working in collaboration, Robertson and Cook's descendants open this history, challenging dominant narratives that misrepresent her motivations for criticizing customary practices and eventually supporting the potlatch ban. Drawing from oral histories, archival materials, and historical and anthropological works, they offer a nuanced portrait of a high-ranked woman who was a cultural mediator; devout Christian; and activist for land claims, fishing and resource rights, and adequate health care. Ga'axsta'las testified at the McKenna-McBride Royal Commission, was the only woman on the executive of the Allied Indian Tribes of BC, and was a fierce advocate for women and children. This powerful meditation on memory documents how the Kwagu'l Gixsam revived their dormant clan to forge a positive social and cultural identity for future generations through feasting and potlatching.

Legal History of Post WWI Halifax by Michael Boudreau

Also new (last spring) from UBC Law and Society series, City of Order: Crime and Society in Halifax, 1918-35 by criminologist/legal historian Michael Boudreau from St. Thomas University, Fredericton. Order on line here.

Here's the blurb:

Interwar Halifax was a city in flux, a place where citizens struggled to adopt new ideas and technologies as they dealt with rising levels of poverty, unemployment, and outmigration. Although many Haligonians debated the pros and cons of the modern world, most agreed on one thing -- modernity was corrupting public morality and unleashing an imposing array of social problems, including crime, on their fair city.

 

Michael Boudreau pieces together from case files and archival records a riveting portrait of citizens, policy makers, and officials turning to the criminal justice system to create a bulwark against further social dislocation. Officials modernized the city’s machinery of order -- courts, prisons, and the police force -- and placed greater emphasis on crime control, while residents supported tough-on-crime measures and attached little importance to rehabilitation. These initiatives, in this particular cultural context, gave birth to a constructed vision of a criminal class that provided the police with convenient targets in their effort to build a city of order -- ethnic minorities, working-class men, and female and juvenile offenders.

 

This absorbing study of crime and culture in interwar Halifax shows how tough-on-crime measures can compound, rather than resolve, social inequalities and dislocations.

 

New book from UBC press on the legal response to Westray by Steven Bittle

New in print from the UBC Press Law and Society Series, Still Dying for a Living, by University of Ottawa criminologist Steven Bittle. Hardcover, $95.00. Order online here.

Here's the publisher's blurb:

In 1992, a preventable explosion at the WestrayMine in Plymouth, Nova Scotia, killed twenty-six miners. More than a decade later, the government enacted Bill C-45, commonly known as the Westray bill, to hold organizations criminally liable for seriously injuring and killing workers and the public. Yet, while the federal government declared the Westray bill an important step, the law has thus far failed to produce a crackdown on corporate crime.

 

In Still Dying for a Living, Steven Bittle turns a critical eye on the Westray bill, revealing how legal, economic, and cultural discourses surrounding the bill downplayed

the seriousness of workplace injury and death, effectively characterizing these crimes as regrettable but largely unavoidable accidents and in the process obscuring their underlying causes

 

 

 

 

 

Free article from Canadian Review of American Studies

 

 

UTPJournals Focus

 

Included in the free articles for October 24-30, 2012  

Canadian Review of American Studies 36.1 “‘Eighty Years and More: Looking Back at the Nineteenth Amendment” by Mary Chapma and Angela Mills

Abstract: ‘‘Eighty Years and More – Looking Back at the Nineteenth Amendment’’ is the introduction to a special issue on American Woman Suffrage timed to coincide with the eighty-fifth anniversary of the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920. The anniversary invites us to raise questions about memory and memorialization, about which stories about suffrage endure (such as Susan B. Anthony’s primacy in the campaign) and which figures and activities have been excluded from myth-making chronicles like the six-volume History of Woman Suffrage. As an overview of the collection, the introduction outlines both the impetuses for and the implications of dismantling traditional narratives of suffrage and refiguring the campaign as a multilayered, multifaceted phenomenon, functioning on many fronts and involving many figures whose efforts have been hidden from history. The special issue as a whole works to challenge old orthodoxies about the suffrage campaign by re-evaluating the contributions of figures like New York author–activist Lillie Devereux Blake and Wyoming justice of the peace Esther Morris and by reconsider­ing the rhetorical work performed by the creative tactics that characterized the campaign, including oratory, literature, and stereotyping. Reviews of three recent works of scholarship on American suffrage remind us of the persistent interest in interrogating the historiography of suffrage and of the continued need for research that furthers the goals of re-evaluation.

Toronto Legal History Group now Osgoode Society Legal History Workshop

Since there is considerable overlap (probably about 99% plus) between the readers of this blog and the people on Jim Phillips' legal history distribution list, I am always reluctant to post duplicate notices.

However, there are times I do take notice here of announcements Jim has sent to the list which readers may want to be able to consult without rooting through old emails.

This seems like one of those times.

I won't reproduce the entire email (anyone who is not on the list should email Jim at j.phillips@utoronto.ca pronto--you get sent great draft papers to read.)

But here is an excerpt:

...the [legal history] group is continuing to run in the same way that it has for many years. The Osgoode Society for Canadian Legal History is funding it, and I am very grateful to the Directors for that decision. Its formal name is now The Osgoode Society Legal History Workshop.  Once the new Osgoode Society website is up and running (in a few weeks time I hope) you will be able to access schedules and other information (and at least some papers) on that website, and information will also be posted on the Osgoode Society blog run by Mary Stokes.
For the sake of convenience the sessions will continue to be held at the University of Toronto law school.
I am also happy to say that Osgoode Hall Law School has agreed to make a financial contribution to the workshop. That contribution will be earmarked to bring in one or two speakers from outside Toronto. Again, my sincere thanks to Osgoode Hall for this, and especially to Dean Lorne Sossin.

Jim goes on to say that new or renewed memberships (which include the members' book of the year) and donations (tax receiptable) to the Osgoode Society for Canadian Legal History are always welcome, and while the workshop is sufficiently funded, anyone who especially wants to support the workshop financially for the future may designate his or her donation to that purpose or to the Stuart Thom fund for special projects.

You can also support the workshop by volunteering to present, attending as many sessions as you can (you don't have to restrict yourself to papers that are squarely in your area of expertise!) and sending Jim any suggestions for occasional out-of-town visitors.

Reminder: there is an extra session of the Osgoode Society Legal History Workshop this week, not listed in the orginal schedule. We look forward to seeing many of you at 6:30 pm, Wednesday, to hear Catherine MacMillan of the University of London speak on "Judging the Coronation Cases: Edwardian Advances in Contractual Frustration?".

The Osgoode Society Legal History Workshop meets this Wednesday, October 10th, at 6.30, Faculty Common Room, Flavelle House, U of T Law School.

The presenter is Bettina Bradbury of York University, on

"Troubling Inheritances: An Illegitimate Maori daughter contests her father’s will in the New Zealand Courts and the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council."

Australia-New Zealand Legal History Conference

The bi-annual conference of the Australia-New Zealand Legal History Society is taking place at the University of Technology, Sydney, December 8-10. It is organised by Shaunnagh Dorsett, and the theme is 'Receiving Laws/Giving Laws.' The programme and other details can be accessed at 
www.law.uts.ed.au/research/conferences/receiving_laws.html.

Jim Phillips

Wilke on Memorializing Nazis' Victims in Berlin

Forthcoming in the International Journal of Transitional Justice, an article in the vein of public history by Christiane Wilke on "Remembering Complexity? Memorials for Nazi Victims in Berlin," now available on SSRN.

Here's the abstract:

How do memorials shape who we think we are? And how are our identities involved when we debate, create, and interact with memorials? This essay engages in a conversation with scholarship on intersectional identities and memorial practices in Berlin. Intersectionality scholarship, with its roots in US critical race feminism, has much to offer for thinking about the complexity of identities, yet it does not consider the role of memory, time, and temporality. The scholarship on memory and memorials, in turn, does not sufficiently consider the complexity of identities of those who are memorialized and of those who visit memorials. The essay asks how three different monuments for Nazi victims in Berlin allow for or facilitate the memory of complex identities. The example of the Monument for the Persecuted Homosexuals shows that memorial practices can be crucial in contemporary identity politics and social movements. The essay calls for a more self-reflexive approach to the role of identities and complexity in memorial scholarship and practice.

Cross biography of Robert Baldwin off the press

From Philip Girard, the news that Dr.Michael Cross's biography of Robert Baldwin is now available in bookstores. In Ottawa, at least. The Oxford University Press website is reporting a November 2012 availability. Maybe that's just online.



A Biography of Robert Baldwin: The Morning Star of Memory
by Michael Cross



In any event, this is welcome new to historians of Ontario. It was a little embarrassing that we had no book-length academic bio of Baldwin, one of the most significant Upper Canadians of the nineteenth century. And to legal historians: while Baldwin is primarily known as a political reformer, a recent book by legal historian Blake Brown, A Trying Question, has highlighted his extraordinary innovation in jury reform. He is also known (to me, mostly) as the progenitor of the Municipal Act of 1849, known as the Baldwin Act to contemporaries, an equally impressive reform in local governance. Here's hoping Professor Cross doesn't give short shrift to these legal arena achievements, though admittedly they are less spectacular than Baldwin's personal peccadilloes, which to my mind put Mackenzie King's to shame.

Thanks for the tip, Philip.

Smith on Canadian Currency and Banking Laws 1871

In the vol. 13 (3) September 2012 issue of Enterprise & Society, an article by Andrew Smith of Coventry University, "Continental Divide: The Canadian Banking and Currency Laws of 1871 in the Mirror of the United States." Professor Smith's blog on economic and business history, The Past Speaks is highly recommended (by me!)

Here's the abstract:

The essay discusses the ways in which an 1871 banking and currency law helped Canada form a stable banking industry, and compares this industry with that of the U.S. The laws' implementation of Canadian transcontinental branch banking and importance to Canadian state formation are outlined. The effects of Canada's Britain-inspired political culture on the formation of this banking system are also detailed. Other topics discussed include monetary policy, usury laws, and legislative debates.

New work on Canadian human rights policy (including history)

A new publication from McGill-Queen's University Press,

Why Canada Cares:

Human Rights and Foreign Policy in Theory and Practice by Andrew Lui includes a large dollop of legal history as part of the examination of Canadian human rights foreign policies.

 

Here's the publisher's blurb:

 

Support for international human rights has become an entrenched part of Canada's national mythology. Despite the gravity of human rights issues and how Canada appears to champion various causes, the role of human rights in Canadian foreign policy has received surprisingly little scrutiny. In Why Canada Cares, Andrew Lui brings clarity to this under-explored part of Canada's identity.

 

Lui provides a chronological and theoretically grounded analysis of human rights in Canadian foreign policy since 1945. He argues that while the country has rarely proven willing to sacrifice material advantage for international human rights causes, Canada has pursued human rights as part of a broader attempt to cement individual rights as the cornerstone of Canadian federalism and aimed to mitigate friction between the country's diverse social groups. In other words, international human rights were implemented as a way to express and establish an expansive vision of what Canadian society should look like in order to survive and flourish as a coherent and unified political entity.

 

Why Canada Cares uncovers the foundations of Canada's international human rights policies and offers insight into their possibilities and limits.

 

 

Updated: Kirkby on Henry Maine and the ReConstitution of the British Empire

Coel Kirkby, who is finishing up his dissertation at St. Edmund's College, Cambridge has sent me a pdf of a recently published review article in the Modern Law Review (not yet online). It's a review of Karuna Mantena s' Alibis of Empire: Henry Maine and the Ends of Liberal Imperialism, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010, 269 pp, hb £27.50.) Coel hopes it explains 'ideologies' better than the paper he gave at the Toronto Legal History Group workshop in the spring. Well, Coel, I confess I hardly remember that discussion now, but I think the review essay is both clear and interesting. You should post it on SSRN, though, so I could include a link! Or on your Academia.edu page.

Update: Coel says the article is now online at .http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1468-2230.2012.00919.x/abstract

Nelson and Waters on WWII Allied Bombing of Civilians

Just posted on SSRN and destined for vol. 14 of the Journal of the History of International Law, University of Windsor Professors Christopher P.M. Waters and Robert Nelson (of the Faculty of Law and Department of History respectively) collaborate on "The Allied Bombing of German Cities During the Second World War from a Canadian Perspective."

Here's the abstract:

This paper addresses the history of the legality of the aerial bombardment of civilians, from the earliest attempts at legalization, through the inter-war period and into the actual bombing campaigns of the Second World War. We then chart the paucity of discussion of the legality of said bombing both during the war and throughout the Cold War, and finish with the occasional interruptions to the legal silence since 1992 in Canada and elsewhere.

Cameron on 30 years of sec. 2 b of the Charter

The Legal History E-Journal sends notice that Jamie Cameron of Osgoode Hall Law School has posted an article on "A Reflection on Section 2(b)’s Quixotic Journey, 1982-2012", which appears in the Fall 2012 issue of the Supreme Court Law Review has been posted on SSRN.

This is the sort of thing I debate (with myself) about including in this blog. (And sometimes get questioned about.) It's not capital H history, but I think it is relevant to historians.

I probably have mentioned here before that I believe presentism has its place in legal history. Or perhaps it is better to say that history has a place in normative analysis, which is almost necessarily presentist.

Prof. Cameron is a judicial biographer, and as such a historian of judges lives' and works, and a constitutionalist, and therefore a historian (of sorts) of jurisprudence. I mean no disrespect: Professor Cameron does not purport to be doing history qua history, as the venue of publication evinces. And as the abstract makes clear, this piece goes beyond presentism--to futurism in fact. But the acknowledgment that the present is not forever--it is not present for all time--is especially marked in constitutionalists, and to my mind is a welcome change from what Philip Girard calls the conception of timeless past seen in much legal writing, especially in respect to legal subjects in which the common law dominates. This acknowledgement should be encouraged by legal historians. The importance of the past and the fact of the future are to my mind two sides of the same coin.


Here's the abstract, which should illustrate what I mean.

The point of departure for the journey ahead is the journey behind, from 1982 to 2012. This reflection describes s.2(b)’s journey in the first thirty years of the Charter as quixotic: principle led the way at times but too often and too easily was displaced by unsound methodologies. The expressive freedom jurisprudence developed an incoherent methodology that applied content neutrality under s.2(b) but readily upheld content-based limits under s.1 by deferring to perceptions – both legislative and judicial – that certain expressive activities are harmful. Meanwhile, the status of the press and media under s.2(b) remains unclear because the Court has been unwilling to constitutionalize the newsgathering function or acknowledge that interference with that function violates the Charter. By contrast, the Court’s response to open justice – which engages expressive and press interests – produced a methodology that gave strong protection to values of access, transparency, and accountability in the justice system. Having discussed the doctrinal patterns and anomalies of the first thirty years this reflection looks ahead – to offer a more holistic view of s.2(b) which highlights process values, and outline the steps that must be taken demonstrate that the Charter’s guarantees of expressive and press freedom truly matter

.
Cameron's 'reflection' may not be legal history per se but should be a point of departure for legal historians. She has laid out the 'how' of s.2 b's non-linear journey. Historians can tackle the 'why' of this meandering..

Here is an announcement of a very interesting looking symposium on the legal history of the French Atlantic.

The French Atlantic has not yet received the sustained attention given to the British and Spanish Atlantic, particularly where the topic of law is concerned. This conference will explore the legal dimension (broadly conceived) of the French Atlantic empire in the early modern period. The variegated and rapidly evolving juridical order of ancien régime France was deeply implicated in the expansion of overseas commerce, the founding of colonies, and the creation of imperial administrations.

Participants may explore topics such as: legal discourse and imperial ideologies; the establishment of colonial jurisdictions in Canada, Louisiana, and the French West Indies; the regulation of slavery; indigenous peoples and the law; the emergence of colonial land tenures; and the legal framework for trade and business enterprise. The organizers wish particularly to encourage comparative approaches that consider more than one French colony and that examine contrasts and convergences with the British, Spanish and Portuguese empires. In according due attention to the distinctive features of French law and the French New World empire, we hope to enrich understandings of Atlantic history generally.

Allan Greer (McGill History) and Richard Ross (Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Law and History) organized “Law and the French Atlantic.”  The conference is an offering of the Symposium on Comparative Early Modern Legal History, which gathers yearly under the auspices of the Center for Renaissance Studies at the Newberry Library in Chicago in order to explore a particular topic in the comparative legal history of the Atlantic world in the period c.1492-1815.  Funding has been provided by the University of Illinois College of Law.

Attendance at the Symposium is free and open to the public.  Participants and attendees should preregister by contacting the Center for Renaissance Studies at the Newberry Library at 312.255.3514, or send an e-mail to renaissance@newberry.org<mailto:renaissance@newberry.org>. Papers will be precirculated electronically to all registrants.

For information about the conference, please consult our website at http://www.newberry.org/symposium-comparative-early-modern-legal-history or contact Prof. Richard Ross at Rjross@illinois.edu<mailto:Rjross@illinois.edu> or at 217-244-7890.

Here is the program and schedule:

9:00 Welcome: Allan Greer (McGill, History) and Richard Ross (University of Illinois,

Urbana-Champaign, Law and History)

9:05 to 10:35: Panel: The Legal Foundations of the French Atlantic Empire

Alexandre Dubé (Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture): “The Army, the Navy, the Governor, and the Colony: Frameworks of Public Law in the French Atlantic”

Brett Rushforth (William and Mary, History): “‘Governed by the Same Laws, without Distinction or Difference’: Legal Pluralism and the Construction of Empire in the Early Modern French Atlantic”

Miranda Spieler (Arizona, History): “Slaves and the Old Regime: The View from Paris”

Commentator: David Bell (Princeton, History)

Chair: Richard Ross (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, Law and History)

10:35 to 10:50: Refreshment Break

10:50 to 12:20: Panel: Economy and Empire

Allan Greer (McGill, History): “A Feudal Empire?  Land Tenure in the French Atlantic”

Helen Dewar (University of Toronto, History): “Company Logic Meets Legal Accountability: The Question of Liability of Chartered Enterprises in the Mid-17-Century French Atlantic”

Catherine Desbarats (McGill, History): “Payback for Default:  Legalities of Counterfeit in the French Atlantic”

Commentator: Paul Cheney (University of Chicago, History)

Chair: To be announced

12:20 to 1:40: Lunch: Participants and audience members are invited to try the restaurants in the neighborhood around the Newberry.

1:40 to 3:10: Panel: Slavery and the Code Noir

Guillaume Aubert (William and Mary, History): “Beyond the Codes Noirs: The Making of Slave Law(s) in the Early Modern French Atlantic”

Jean-François Niort (Université des Antilles et de la Guyane, Law): “The Code Noir and the Evolution of the French Slave Colonial Law: A New Perspective”

Malick Ghachem (Maine, Law): “The Afterlife of the Law of Slavery: The Code Noir and the Language of Rights in the Era of the Haitian Revolution”

Commentator #1: Jean Hébrard (Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales; and University of Michigan, History)

Commentator #2 and Chair: Lea Vandervelde (Iowa, Law)

3:10 to 3:25: Refreshment Break

3:25 to 4:55 Panel: The Seven Years’ War and After

Christian Crouch (Bard, History): “Indians Out of the Shadows and into the Plot: Tracing Indigenous Voices in Building a French Atlantic Case for Just War”

Michel Morin (Université de Montréal, Law): “The Reactions of the ‘New’ Subjects of Quebec to British Justice for Private Law Matters, 1760-1774”

Hannah Weiss Muller (Harvard, History and Literature): “From French to British: Remonstrance, Representation, and Remediation between Empires”

Commentator #1: Shannon Lee Dawdy (University of Chicago, Anthropology)

Commentator #2 and Chair: Robert Morrissey (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, History)

5:00 Adjourn

Updated: Toronto Legal History Group Fall 2012 schedule

Many subscribers to this blog will know about the Toronto Legal History Group (shortly to be renamed the Osgoode Legal History Workshop, and to operate undeer the auspices of the Osgoode Society. This is an informal Wednesday evening seminar that meets c. 14 times. A paper is pre-circulated and then discussed. Participants are graduate students and faculty in law and history from U of T, York, McMaster and other institutions, as well as law students and members of the profession. Anybody with an interest in legal history is welcome to attend. If you would like to be put on the e-mail list and to receive the papers and other notices, please e-mail j.phillips@utoronto.ca.

The schedule for the next term follows. All sessions are in the Flavelle Room, Flavelle House, Faculty of Law, University of Toronto, starting at 6.30.

Wednesday September 12 - Matthew Light, University of Toronto: "The Ambiguities of Influence: Russia, the Death Penalty, and Europe"

Wednesday September 26 - Nhung Tran, University of Toronto, “Mortgaging Local Culture: the Commodification of Village Performance in Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century Vietnam”

Wednesday October 10 - Bettina Bradbury, York University: “Troubling Inheritances: An Illegitimate Maori daughter contests her father’s will in the New Zealand Courts and the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council.”

UPDATE (NEW): Wednesday, October 17, Catherine MacMillan, University of London: "Judging the Coronation cases."

.

Wednesday October 24 - Doug Hay, York University: “Criminal Lawyers in Eighteenth Century England”

Wednesday November 7 - Bob Steinfeld, University of Buffalo, TBA

Wednesday November 14 - Doug Harris, University of British Columbia, and Jim Phillips, University of Toronto: “History of De facto Expropriation in Canada.” Doug and I will discuss our chapters in the forthcoming book Property on Trial: Canadian Cases in Context, to be published by the Osgoode Society. Eris Tucker of Osgoode Hall Law School, one of the volume editors, will also make some remarks. The book launch for this book, and the other Osgoode Society publications for 2012, is on Thursday November 15, 5 p.m., at Osgoode Hall.

Wednesday November 21 - Paul Craven, York University: “Called to Account: Magistrates and Public Accounts in 19^th Century New Brunswick”

Wednesday December 5 - Anthony Gaughan, Drake University: "Do the Ends Justify the Means? The Trial of the Watergate Burglars."