Backhouse receives honorary doctorate from Western

Constance Backhouse was recently celebrated again when she was granted an honorary doctorate from the University of Western Ontario. This is her second honorary doctorate; she was granted an LLD two years ago from the University of Manitoba. On June 15th she addressed graduates of the Faculties of Education and Postgraduate Studies, not telling them they weren't special, but rather that they are special because they will change the world for the better--a condition subsequent for special-ness as it were. Well said, and congratulations once again, Constance!

I have enclosed another call for papers from the organisers of the Australia New Zealand Law and History Society conference in December. They love having a Canadian contingent, and as you can see the keynote speaker is Philip Girard.

Second Call for Papers

Receiving Laws/ Giving Laws: The 31st Annual Conference of the Australia New Zealand Law and History Society, December 2012, UTS, Sydney

Paper proposals due 31 July 2012

The 31st Annual Conference of the Australia New Zealand Law and History Society will be held at the University of Technology, Sydney (UTS), 10-12 December 2012.

Keynote speaker: Professor Philip Girard, Dalhousie – “Colonization, Culture, Continuity:  The Role of Law”

Plenary speaker: Professor Christopher Tomlins, UC Irvine – “Debt, Death, and Redemption: Toward a History of the Turner Rebellion”

Keynote Panel: “Receiving Laws / Giving Laws: Three Takes” - Professor Anne Orford, Melbourne, A/Prof Katherine Biber, UTS, Dr Damen Ward, Crown Law, Wellington

More information, including on the conference theme, can be found at http://www.law.uts.edu.au/research/conferences/index.html

Inquiries or paper proposals - including a title, brief abstract and brief biography - should be sent to shaunnagh.dorsett@uts.edu.au by 31 July 2012. While papers on the conference theme are encouraged, abstracts can be submitted on any legal history topic.

All proposals will be assessed, and successful submitters contacted at the end of July. Conference registration, accommodation and other information will be posted to the conference webpage in August.

UTS is the most centrally located law school in Sydney, situated next to Central Station, on the edge of China Town, three minutes by monorail from Sydney’s central shopping district and a short trip to the harbour by direct train or bus.

Bradbury book on wives, widows and the law wins Clio-Quebec prize

Another legal history was a prize winner at the CHA annual meeting. Bettina Bradbury's Wife to Widow:  Lives, Laws, and Politics in Nineteenth-Century Montreal, published by UBC press, won the Clio prize for best Quebec history. Wife to Widow was also short-listed for the John A. Macdonald prize for best book on Canadian history.

Girard book on Beamish Murdoch wins Clio-Atlantic prize

The announcement was made at the CHA annual meeting in Waterloo that Lawyers and Legal Culture in British North America: Beamish Murdoch of Halifax by Philip Girard,  one of the Osgoode Society's 2011 publications has won the Clio prize for Atlantic Canada from the Canadian Historical Association. Details will be available soon on the CHA website. Congratulations to Philip, whose winning streak continues, and to the Osgoode Society, for adding another to an impressive list of award winners.

Philip Girard to move to Osgoode

From the Dean's announcement:

The Faculty Appointments Committee has approved that an offer of appointment to the Osgoode full-time faculty be made to Professor Philip Girard. Professor Girard first taught at the University of Western Ontario Faculty of Law before moving to Dalhousie in 1984 (now the Schulich School of Law). He has served as Acting Dean of the Faculty (1991-1993), as Associate Dean Graduate Studies & Research (Law) (2002-2006), and as President of the Canadian Association of Law Teachers (2003-04). Prior to teaching law, Professor Girard served as a law clerk to Mr. Justice W.Z. Estey of the Supreme Court of Canada. He has also been twice appointed the James Lewtas Visiting Professor, Osgoode Hall Law School (1993-1994; 2011-2012). His teaching and research subjects include: Property in its Historical Context; Equity and Trusts; Canadian Legal History; and Pension Law. He is the recipient of many teaching and research awards and distinctions.

Speaking for myself, and I'm sure for all of us in the Toronto area legal history community, this is very welcome news (although many of us have known about it for quite a while.) Philip is returning to Halifax for the 2012-3 year to sell his house (and fulfil teaching commitments et al.) but will be here permanently in September 2013.

Brown on gun law history in CHR

Blake Brown, whose forthcoming book on gun control (and lack thereof) will be the Osgoode Society's members' book this year, has an article on the subject in the Canadian Historical Review.

'Every boy ought to learn to shoot and to obey orders': Guns, Boys, and the Law in English Canada from the late Nineteenth Century to the Great War' appears in the June 2012 issue.

Here's the abstract:

Firearms became a key part of boy and male youth culture in English Canada before the Great War. By the 1890s, imperialist sentiments had infused the growing interest in hunting, advocates of which celebrated the value of rifle shooting by suggesting that it made boys into ideal British men. As well, emerging worries about the feminization of urban youth led to calls for military drill and rifle training. At the same time, businesses heavily marketed cheap, mass-produced arms to young people by asserting that firearms could inculcate manly virtues. Businesses also attempted to redefine some weapons as acceptable consumer items. The use of weapons by young people led to a number of apprehended social ills, including accidental shootings, environmental destruction, and militarizing a generation of young people. However, legislative efforts to limit access to firearms were modest. In 1892 and 1913, the Canadian government placed limitations on to whom certain weapons could be sold, but the widespread assumption that certain kinds of arms were acceptable for most boys and youth meant that these measures frequently went unenforced.

Free UTP article on Louis Riel's legal status available online

The U of T Press journals division has the happy practice of providing pdfs of older articles from one of the UTPs many journals that can be accessed online without a subscription. Free samples, I guess. Those of us with university library privileges don't need the extra free access, but it's great to get notice of articles that may have escaped attention the first time around.

This week one of the highlighted items is of interest to Canadian legal historians, an article from the Canadian Historical Review volume 88 #2 (June 2007) by Jeremy Ravi Mumford, entitled "Why Was Louis Riel, a United States Citizen, Hanged as a Canadian Traitor in 1885?" This question is one that has intrigued students at all levels of study of one of the great set pieces of the national narrative, and it's great to get some answers, or at least guesses as to the legal and political reasons behind the conundrum.

Here's the abstract:

In what sense was Louis Riel, a foreign citizen who had formally renounced his allegiance to Britain, a traitor to the Queen? And why did his adopted country, the United States, do nothing to protect him? Since the Canadian Naturalization Act of 1881 for the first time permitted emigrants to renounce their British allegiance, Riel's legal status was no different from that of any foreigner, and to charge a foreigner with treason was unusual and controversial. The United States, furthermore, had a history of advocating aggressively for citizens charges with crimes abroad, even when they were clearly guilty, and especially for political militants in Britain and Canada. Yet for a number of independent reasons, including decisions of courtroom strategy and the internal politics of the United States in 1885, Riel's lawyers and his adopted government chose not to raise his citizenship as an issue. The surprising silence about his US citizenship at the end of his life has distorted our historical understanding of Riel as a figure of the nineteenth-century Canadian-American borderland.