New from UTP: On being here to stay: Treaties and Aboriginal Rights in Canada by Michael Asch

New from UTP:

ON BEING HERE TO STAY: TREATIES AND ABORIGINAL RIGHTS IN CANADA

By Michael Asch of the Department of Anthropology, University of Victoria

Here's what the publisher has to say: What, other than numbers and power, justifies Canada’s assertion of sovereignty and jurisdiction over the country’s vast territory? Why should Canada’s original inhabitants have to ask for rights to what was their land when non-Aboriginal people first arrived? The question lurks behind every court judgment on Indigenous rights, every demand that treaty obligations be fulfilled, and every land-claims negotiation.

Addressing these questions has occupied anthropologist Michael Asch for nearly thirty years. In On Being Here to Stay, Asch retells the story of Canada with a focus on the relationship between First Nations and settlers.

Asch proposes a way forward based on respecting the “spirit and intent” of treaties negotiated at the time of Confederation, through which, he argues, First Nations and settlers can establish an ethical way for both communities to be here to stay.

Ingram on Animal Rights in Victorian Canada

And last but not least, also in the Journal of Canadian Studies, University of Ottawa historian Darcy Ingram has an article, "Beastly Measures: Animal Welfare, Civil Society, and State Policy in Victorian Canada."

The abstract:

This essay analyzes the development of Canada's animal welfare movement during the nineteenth century. Situating Canada's experience alongside that of England and the United States, it identifies an enthusiastic but conservative response to animal welfare, which the author argues reflects the high level of dependence among the movement's upper- and middle-class supporters on animals as resources, sources of labour, and objects of sport. In particular, it focusses on the participation of sportsmen, cattle ranchers, industrialists, foxhunters, veterinarians, and others who recognized in the movement both the material and the ethical benefits that might accrue from the improved treatment of animals. As such, the essay brings to the literature on animal welfare and animal rights a sense of the movement's economic dimensions, or the ways in which material concerns regarding property and productivity converged with but also limited the animal welfare movement's ethical parameters. In doing so, it accounts for the near absence in Canada of the more radical agendas that informed the movement's civil society parameters elsewhere, and in turn the ways in which the moderate vision that informed the nation's animal welfare nongovernmental organizations contributed to an equally moderate response on the part of the state. 

Le présent article analyse l'essor du mouvement de protection des animaux au Canada au XlXe siècle. En comparant l'expérience canadienne à celle de l'Angleterre et des États-Unis, l'article identifie une réaction enthousiaste mais conservatrice vis-à-vis de la protection des animaux. Selon l'auteur, ceci reflète le fait que les adeptes du mouvement, de classe supérieure ou de classe moyenne, dépendaient beaucoup des animaux comme ressources, sources de main-d'œuvre et objets sportifs. En particulier, il met l'accent sur la participation des sportifs, des grands éleveurs de bovins, des industriels, des chasseurs de renards, des vétérinaires et d'autres personnes qui ont reconnu dans le mouvement les bienfaits matériels et éthiques qui pouvaient être obtenus en améliorant le traitement des animaux. Cet article examine donc la littérature sur la protection et les droits des animaux en fonction des dimensions économiques du mouvement, ou des façons dont les préoccupations matérielles concernant la propriété et la productivité ont convergé avec les paramètres éthiques du mouvement de protection des animaux tout en les limitant. Ce faisant, il explique l'absence presque totale au Canada des programmes plus radicaux qui ont teinté les paramètres de la société civile ailleurs dans le monde, ainsi que les façons dont la vision modérée des organismes non gouvernementaux de la nation axés sur la protection des animaux a contribué à une réaction tout aussi modérée de la part de l'État.

Meren and Plumptre on Environmentalism, Arctic Sovereignty, and the Law of the Sea, 1968-82

Also in the most recent issue of the  Journal of Canadian Studies, University of Montreal Historian David Meren and McGill student Bora Plumptre have an article on "Rights of Passage: The Intersecting of Environmentalism, Arctic Sovereignty, and the Law of the Sea, 1968-82."

Here's the abstract:

This essay brings environmental and diplomatic history into conversation in order to examine the Trudeau government's response to the 1969-70 voyages of the oil tanker Manhattan through the Northwest Passage. By passing the Arctic Waters Pollution Prevention Act and extending Canada's territorial sea to 12 miles, Ottawa successfully instrumentalized the heightened environmental concern of the period in order to press Canadian claims to sovereignty in the Arctic. The essay demonstrates that this custodial approach was consistent with the functionalist tradition in Canadian liberal internationalism. More broadly, it reveals the promise of re-examining Canadian international history through the prism of environmental history. [

Le présent article se sert de I'histoire diplomatique et environnementale pour examiner la réaction du gouvernement Trudeau aux voyages faits en 1969-197o par le navire pétrolier Manhattan dans le passage du Nord-Ouest. En promulguant la Loi sur la prévention de la pollution des eaux arctiques et en étendant la mer territoriale du Canada jusqu'à 12 milles, Ottawa a réussi à instrumentaliser les préoccupations environnementales accrues de la période pour appuyer les revendications canadiennes de la souveraineté dans I'Arctique. L'article démontre que cette démarche gardienne s'intégrait bien à la tradition fonctionnaliste de I'internationalisme libéral canadien. D'un point de vue plus général, I'article promet de réexaminer I'histoire internationale canadienne à travers le prisme de I'histoire environnementale.

Monaghan on Mounties and the Myths of Settler Colonial Policing in the Canada

In the Journal of Canadian Studies winter 2013 issue an article by Jeffrey Monaghan (currently a PHD candidate in Sociology at Queen's) on "Mounties in the Frontier: Circulations, Anxieties, and Myths of Settler Colonial Policing in Canada."

Here's the abstract:

Examining correspondence records from 1886 onward, this essay details how the North-West Mounted Police (NWMP) established patrol routes in the year following the North-West Rebellion. Discussing how patrols were intended to enhance the circulation of NWMP officers, the author borrows from Michel Foucault (2007) to examine how correspondence records characterize the objectives and methods of the new patrols. In part aimed at accumulating knowledge of natural and artificial conditions, the circulations aimed to anticipate, contain, and control outbreaks of perceived dangers. The circulation of patrols also produced various forms of knowledge and imaginings about the Indigenous population in the North-West. By continuously sorting and distinguishing between "good Indians" and "bad Indians," circulations contribute to settler anxieties and elicit further calls for "law and order." The author details how the enhanced circulation of NWMP patrols often produce anxieties and rumours that are rooted in the colonial imagination, serving to rationalize mechanisms of security as an essential function of liberal order-building. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A la lumière de correspondance datant de 1886, le présent article décrit comment la Gendarmerie à cheval du Nord-Ouest (G.C.N.-O.) a établi des parcours de patrouille pendant l'année qui a suivi la Rébellion du Nord-Ouest. L'auteur explique ici comment les patrouilles avaient pour but d'améliorer la circulation des agents de la G.C.N.-O. et il se sert des idées de Michel Foucault (2007) pour examiner comment cette correspondance caractérise les objectifs et les méthodes des nouvelles patrouilles. Intéressées en partie à recueillir des connaissances des conditions naturelles et artificielles, les patrouilles voulaient anticiper, limiter et contrôler les flambées de dangers perçus. Les patrouilles fournissaient également diverses formes de connaissances et de suppositions sur les populations autochtones du Nord-Ouest. En différenciant continuellement les « bons Indiens » et les « mauvais Indiens », les patrouilleurs ont contribué à l'anxiété des colons et entraîné des requêtes additionnelles pour assurer I'ordre public. L'auteur signale comment la circulation accrue des patrouilles de la G.C.N.-O. a souvent causé un regain d'anxiété et la diffusion de rumeurs prenant racine dans I'imagination coloniale et favorisant la nationalisation de mécanismes de sécurité perçus comme une fonction essentielle de l'établissement d'un ordre libéral.

3 papers by Michel Morin on SSRN

Via the Legal History Blog (I don't know how they always manage to get wind of Canadian legal history papers on SSRN before I do--I must remember to ask someday):

Michel Morin has posted three papers on SSRN: on British Constitutional Principles in post conquest Quebec, on Blackstone and the Birth of Quebec Legal Culture, and Fraternity, Sovereignty and Autonomy of Aboriginals in New France (Fraternité, Souveraineté Et Autonomie Des Autochtones En Nouvelle-France).

For abstracts and other details, see the Legal History Blog.

Jim Phillips awarded Mundell medal

Congratulations to Jim Phillips, editor in chief of the Osgoode Society, Professor of Law at U of T, founder and organizer of the Osgoode Society Legal History Workshop, (formerly Toronto Legal History Group), supporter extraordinaire of legal history in Canada, friend to students of legal history at every level, and exemplary historian, who has just been awarded the Mundell Medal for excellence in legal writing.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

Jim Phillips is the recipient of the 2013 David Walter Mundell Medal.

The Mundell Medal honours those who have made a distinguished contribution to law and letters. It celebrates great legal writing and recognizes that the artful use of language in the right style has the power to give life to ideas. 

Jim Phillips is a professor in the Faculty of Law at the University of Toronto with a cross-appointment in the Department of History. He has written extensively in the field of legal history and particularly the history of criminal law in British North America/Canada. He is currently the editor-in-chief of the Osgoode Society for Canadian Legal History, which is devoted to the promotion of scholarship on the history of Canadian law. 

Professor Phillips obtained both his PhD in History and his LLB from Dalhousie University. He also clerked for former Supreme Court of Canada Justice Bertha Wilson.

This is a well deserved award!

Hibbitts post on Canadian Lawyers in the US on Legal History Blog

Bernard Hibbitts looks at the history of Canadian lawyers in the U.S. in another interesting blog post at the Legal History Blog.

J.I.Little, "Charities, Manufactures and Taxes: The Montreal Sisters of Providence Spruce Gum Syrup Case, 1876-78"

In the Canadian Historical Review Online, J. I. Little on "Charities, Manufactures, and Taxes: The Montreal Sisters of Providence Spruce Gum Syrup Case, 1876–78".

The abstract in English:

Combining political, business, medical, and social history, this micro-historical study examines the cultural and ideological tensions that surfaced when Montreal's Sisters of Providence began marketing their spruce gum syrup throughout the province and beyond. The foray of a tax-free institution into the open marketplace challenged the liberal tenet of fair competition and ultimately represented a victory for conservative rights over the liberal order that historians claim dominated Quebec as well as the rest of Canada by the later nineteenth century.

Are you a fan of Canadian legal history?

Time to join/renew your membership to the Osgoode Society!

Membership and renewal can now be done online.

There are four categories of membership, starting at $21.50 for students.

Members receive the members' book for the year at no extra charge, and the option of purchasing one or all of our three other books for the year.

The 2014 members' book will be A History of the Ontario Court of Appeal by Christopher Moore. The optional extras this year are:

• The Rise and Fall of British Columbia's Human Rights State, 1953-1984, by Dominique Clement
• Petty Justice: Low Law and the Sessions System in Charlotte County, New Brunswick, 1785-1867, by Paul Craven
• Ruin and Redemption: The Struggle for a Canadian Bankruptcy Law, 1867-1919, by Thomas Telfer

Reposting: Legal History Blog post by Bernard Hibbitts on being a Canadian teaching legal history to Americans

If you don't follow the excellent (American) Legal History Blog, you should at least check out this blog post by Bernard Hibbitts on the challenges of being a non-American teaching American Legal History .

Historians have put the "I" back into history, as the expression goes. It's an intriguing step forward to consider the ramifications of putting the "I" into teaching. Most academics introduce themselves and their backgrounds to their students at the outset of a course, but I think few really put much thought into what that means for the choices they make as academics, in teaching as well as in writing.

Here is some of what Hibbitts has to say:

At the same time, I think being a Canadian immigrant constitutes a strength that draws me to topics and situations that are often ignored in the standard historiography of American lawyering, such as that is. Reflecting the relatively high profile of indigenous "First Nations" peoples in Canada, I'm naturally drawn to the meager but still remarkable historical record of indigenous lawyering in the United States, both before and after the Trail of Tears. I'm interested in white lawyer in-migrations (from Europe and Canada) and out-migrations (to Canada, Europe, and even Central and South America) that to this point have been underplayed or not considered as interconnected events. As a cultural and perhaps even biological heir of the Loyalists, I'm particularly interested in American lawyers from the 18th century through the 20th who experienced war, loss, and exile north of the border and elsewhere. As an expatriate of a nation whose people still like to think of themselves as peacekeepers, I'm fascinated by the longstanding militarism of American lawyers both at home and abroad. As someone who came into the American "melting pot" from the Canadian "mosaic" I'm intrigued by the ongoing but underemphasized implications of ethnicity in American lawyering, and how the ethnic background of white American lawyers (English, German, Irish, Canadian, Italian, Russian, Jewish etc.) shaped their concerns, attitudes and initiatives over time. Coming from a (Con)federation of powerful provinces, I'm struck by the deep historical regionalism of American lawyering that in my view transcends in both significance and subtlety the North-South and/or East-West divides we tend to limit ourselves to today. Being a citizen of a county whose political spectrum (even now) is left-shifted as compared to the contemporary United States, I'm impressed by the many "lost" American lawyers who campaigned tirelessly for labor and working people in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries but whose efforts and contributions were largely erased from remembered American legal history after the 1920s and, even moreso, the 1950s. Finally, coming from a national legal educational system that was never as dependent on one law school and one instructional model, I've been almost relieved to recover in the dusty and literally disintegrating records of the forgotten US correspondence law schools (circa roughly 1890-1925) a legal pedagogical counterculture that was, to put it bluntly, far more visionary (not to mention profoundly democratic) than anything Christopher Columbus Langdell ever came up with at Harvard Law School.

News: Law Society of Upper Canada Archives now on Facebook (also Flickr, YouTube)

Via LSUC archivist Paul Leatherdale:

The Law Society of Upper Canada Archives is pleased to announce the launch of its <https://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Law-Society-of-Upper-Canada-Archives/251776288326875>Facebook page. I hope you all “like† us!

We envision our Facebook page as a place where we can promote the history of the legal profession of Ontario, highlight new acquisitions and treasures from our collection, promote events, and engage the archival community and our users.

I encourage you to also visit our <http://www.flickr.com/photos/lsuc_archives/>Flickr page and <http://www.youtube.com/user/lsucarchives>YouTube channel.

New website: UBC Law History project

News from Doug Harris:

We've just launched the website of the UBC Law History Project and I thought some in the legal history community in Canada and beyond might be interested. Here's the link to the press release with an embedded link to the site: <http://www.law.ubc.ca/news/2014/jan/30_01_14_history.html>http://www.law.ubc.ca/news/2014/jan/30_01_14_history.html.

Those who browse about the site will find audio recordings of interviews with many UBC Law alumni as well as faculty and staff. Those working in the history of legal education and of the legal profession may be particularly interested in them.

New from MQUP: Fighting over God: a Legal and Political History of Religious Freedom in Canada

New from McGill-Queen's University Press, Fighting over God: a Legal and Political History of Religious Freedom in Canada by Janet Epp Buckingham.

Here is what the publisher has to say:

Untangling the legal and political history of religion from the cultural fabric of Canada.

---

From before Confederation to the present day, religion has been one of the most contentious issues in Canadian public life. In Fighting over God, Janet Buckingham surveys a vast array of religious conflicts, exploring both their political aspects and the court cases that were part of their resolution.
While topics such as the Manitoba Schools Crisis and debates about Sunday shopping are familiar territory, Buckingham focuses on lesser-known conflicts such as those over the education of Doukhobor and Mennonite children and the banning of the Jehovah's Witness religion under the Defence of Canada Regulations during the Second World War. Subjects are explored thematically with chapters on the history of religious broadcasting, education, freedom of expression, religious practices, marriage and family, and religious institutions.
Contentious issues about religious accommodation are not going away. Fighting over God cites over six hundred legal cases, across nearly four centuries, to provide a rich context for the ongoing social debate about the place of religion in our increasingly secular society.
- See more at: http://www.mqup.ca/fighting-over-god-products-9780773543270.php#sthash.IoaXhGQu.dpuf

Cavanagh on Terra Nullius and Possession in Corporate New France,1600-1663

Ed Cavanagh, Osgoode Society McMurtry Fellow for 2013-14, has published "Possession and Dispossession in Corporate New France, 1600–1663: Debunking a “Juridical History” and Revisiting Terra Nullius" in the Law and History Review.

Abstract:

Following Jacques Cartier's voyages up and down the St. Lawrence River in 1534, 1535–36 and 1541–42, French interest in the region surged. This interest was confined to the region's potential deposits of minerals, and then diverted realistically to the trade of furs, before ultimately, during the seventeenth century, it diversified to take into account the prospect of agricultural smallholding. So confined, this interest did not account for customary tenure and systems of property relations among indigenous inhabitants; generally these were matters avoided by merchants, traders, missionaries, and early settlers until the expediencies of settlement on the ground required otherwise. These were matters for which, in New France, the companies in charge devised no coherent policy. These were matters for which, at home, the French Crown was no beacon of advice either, meting out meager and inconsistent policies of empire before 1663, preferring instead to endorse trade monopolies while preparing for disputes with neighboring nations with competing designs to the New World.

Grammond on changing types of equality claims by Indigenous groups in Newfoundland and Labrador

Forthcoming in the Osgoode Hall Law Journal, and now posted on SSRN, "Equally Recognized? The Indigenous Peoples of Newfoundland and Labrador," by Sebastien Grammond.

Here's the abstract:

In Canada, certain indigenous groups are struggling to obtain official recognition of their status and rights. This is particularly so in Newfoundland and Labrador, where the authorities took the stance, when the province joined Canada in 1949, that no one would be legally considered indigenous. This paper analyzes the claims of the indigenous groups of that province, which have resulted, over the last 30 years, in various forms of official recognition. In particular, it highlights how the concept of equality was used by those groups to buttress their claims. Equality, in this context, was mainly conceived of as “sameness in difference,” that is, the idea that an unrecognized group claims to be treated consistently with other groups that share the same culture or identity and that are already recognized. Such assertions may be made in the context of human rights litigation, but also through joining or leaving associations or federations of indigenous groups. Through that process, unrecognized indigenous groups of the province indicated to whom they wished to be compared and, in doing so, they ironically reinforced the hierarchy of statuses recognized under Canadian law. This article will be published in the next issue of the Osgoode Hall Law Journal (51:2).

Girard session of legal history workshop RESCHEDULED

Due to the inclement (understatement) weather in Toronto today, the session of the Osgoode Society Legal History Workshop scheduled for this evening has been cancelled. Philip Girard will present his paper to the group on Wednesday, February the 19th. 

New details: CLSA/ACDS Graduate Student Essay Prize

CLSA/ACDS Graduate Student Essay Prize

The Canadian Law and Society Association / Association Canadienne Droit et Société invites submissions for the ACDS-CLSA Graduate Student Essay Prize.

Graduate students at Canadian universities are cordially invited to submit papers on socio-legal issues, past, present and future. Papers should be approximately 8000 words long and should be submitted in .doc or .docx format.

Papers must be submitted by May 5, 2014 to Lyndsay Campbell (lyndsay@iii.ca), Chair of the ACDS-CLSA Graduate Student Essay Prize Committee.

Finkelman seminar canceled

Bad news: Unfortunately, Paul Finkelman is unable to give the previously announced seminar at U of T on Thursday. We hope to see you again soon, Professor Finkelman!

New from MQUP: In Duty Bound by J.K. Johnson

New from McGill-Queen's University Press, In Duty Bound: Men, Women and the State in Upper Canada, 1783, 1841, by historian J. K. Johnson.

The publisher describes the book as "an exploration of state records and the forgotten people of Upper Canada:"

In Duty Bound is an unprecedented look at Upper Canada's forgotten people and the ways in which their lives were by necessity bound in a mutual relationship of duty and obligation to the Upper Canadian state.
This neglected area of Canada's history has been preserved, in part, in the form of personal petitions submitted to the lieutenant-governor and legislature for land, government jobs, pensions, pardons and the lessening of court sentences, for compensation for damages done by, or work done for, the state, and for relief. Using these and other previously unexamined government records, J.K. Johnson illustrates that, popular knowledge aside, Upper Canada was not simply a land of self-sufficient farmers and artisans and that many had to turn to and rely on the state for their livelihoods.
The major themes of Upper Canada's history, from war and rebellion to immigration and settlement, are well-documented. In Duty Bound fleshes out the lives of ordinary people in Upper Canada and clarifies how several branches of government worked for, or against, the interests of the population. -