Forthcoming in 2018: The Class Actions Controversy: The Origins and Development of the Ontario Class Proceedings Act, by Suzanne Chiodo

Forthcoming from The Osgoode Society and Irwin Law, the "optional extra" Osgoode Society book for 2018 is  The Class Actions Controversy: The Origins and Development of the Ontario Class Proceedings Act by Suzanne Chiodo.

This book is a historical study of class actions in Ontario, from the origins of representative proceedings in equity, to the rise of modern-day class actions around the world (particularly in the US and Québec), to the debate and passage of class proceedings legislation in Ontario. This is the first in-depth analysis of the history of the Class Proceedings Act and the political and social influences that shaped it, and the first examination of the historical record underlying the CPA. The Act remains one of the most frequently debated procedural mechanisms of its kind. The CPA came about following the release of the Attorney General’s Advisory Committee (AGAC) Report in 1990. None of the current narratives explain how this Report pulled together so many divergent interests where previous attempts had failed. This book answers that question with reference to the legal, political and social environment of the time.

Suzanne Chiodo is a doctoral candidate in Law at Oriel College, Oxford University. She also completed her undergraduate degree in Modern History at Oxford.

Before beginning her doctorate in October 2017, Suzanne was a class actions lawyer at Rochon Genova LLP in Toronto. She completed her LLM in December 2016, supported by funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) and numerous other sources. Her book The Class Actions Controversy arises from her LLM thesis on the history of the Ontario Class Proceedings Act.

Suzanne has taught courses on civil procedure at Osgoode Hall Law School, and has presented papers to the Osgoode Society for Canadian Legal History, the Ontario Bar Association and the Ontario Human Rights Commission. In addition, she has published numerous papers on class actions and tort law.

Suzanne completed her articles of clerkship for the Honourable Mr Justice O’Reilly at the Federal Court. She obtained her JD with Distinction at Western Law, where she spearheaded a successful effort to establish the school’s first student-run academic journal. She received the Law Society of Upper Canada prize for graduating near the top of her class at Western, and also won numerous awards and scholarships for academic excellence, including the JSD Tory Writing Award for original historical research on the international law of occupation that she conducted with Rande Kostal.

A History of Law in Canada, Volume 1: Pre-order by becoming an Osgoode Society member!

A History of Law in Canada, volume 1: Beginnings to 1866 is the Osgoode Society members' book for 2018. Pre-order by becoming a member (other benefits included!)

By Philip Girard, Jim Phillips, and Blake Brown. Published by the University of Toronto Press.

This book, the first of 2 volumes, presents the history of law in what is now Canada, from the first European contacts with northern North America in the very early sixteenth century to immediately before Confederation. Divided into four parts, the book first looks at the roots of Canada’s three legal traditions, Indigenous, French and English, in North America, France and England. Part 2 examines the period down to 1701 and the signing of the treaty known as the Great Peace of Montreal in 1701, during which New France was established. Part 3 deals with the eighteenth century – Anglo-French conflict, New France until 1760,  the establishment and growth of English colonies of settlement, and, throughout, relations with indigenous peoples and governance of indigenous nations. Part 4 is devoted to the British North American period, after 1815. Indigenous people are central of the narrative throughout, including after 1815 when their influence waned as their land base was largely lost in central and eastern Canada. Included in Part 4 are the Red River settlement and early British Columbia. Although the background to this history are the well-known major political, military, social and economic transformations of this part of North America, the book is principally a legal history set against and integrated with that background. Court systems, the judiciary, the legal professions, are dealt with in every period and for each of the legal traditions, and the areas of law covered include criminal, family, constitutional, commercial, land, succession, and civil and criminal procedure. This volume combines the remarkable flowering of scholarship on Canadian legal history, so much of it fostered and published by the Osgoode Society over 35 years, and much new research.

Call for Nominations: Peter Oliver Prize for best published student work in Canadian Legal History

Peter Oliver Prize in Canadian Legal History

The Peter Oliver Prize in Canadian Legal History was established by the Society in 2006 in honour of Professor Peter Oliver, the Society's founding editor-in-chief. The prize is awarded annually for published work (journal article, book chapter, book) in Canadian legal history written by a student.

Students in any discipline at any stage of their careers are eligible. The Society takes a broad view of legal history, one that includes work in socio-legal history, legal culture, etc., as well as work on the history of legal institutions, legal personnel, and substantive law.

Students may self-nominate their published work, and faculty members are also encouraged to nominate student work of which they are aware. Those nominating their own work should send a copy of it to the Society.

The deadline for nominations for the 2018 Prize, to be awarded for work published in 2017, is May 15, 2018.

Please send nominations to Professor Jim Phillips, Editor-in-Chief, Osgoode Society for Canadian Legal History, Osgoode Hall, 130 Queen Street West, Toronto ON M5H 2N6, or by email toj.phillips@utoronto.ca.

Call for Applications: R. Roy McMurtry Fellowship in Canadian Legal History, deadline May 15, 2018

R. Roy McMurtry Fellowship in Legal History

The R. Roy McMurtry Fellowship in Legal History was created in 2007, on the occasion of the retirement as Chief Justice of Ontario of the Hon. R. Roy McMurtry. It honours the contribution to Canadian legal history of Roy McMurtry, Attorney-General and Chief Justice of Ontario, founder of the Osgoode Society for Canadian Legal History and for many years the Society's President.

The fellowship of $16,000 is to support graduate (preferably doctoral) students or those with a recently completed doctorate, to conduct research in Canadian legal history, for one year. Scholars working on any topic in the field of Canadian legal history are eligible. Applicants should be in a graduate programme at an Ontario University or, if they have a completed doctorate, be affiliated with an Ontario University.

The fellowship may be held concurrently with other awards for graduate study. Eligibility is not limited to history and law programmes; persons in cognate disciplines such as criminology or political science may apply, provided the subject of the research they will conduct as a McMurtry fellow is Canadian legal history. The selection committee may take financial need into consideration. Applications will be assessed by a committee appointed by the Osgoode Society for Canadian Legal History.

Those interested in the 2018 fellowship should apply by sending a full c.v. and a statement of the research they would conduct as a McMurtry fellow to Amanda Campbell, McMurtry Fellowship Selection Committee, Osgoode Society for Canadian Legal History, Osgoode Hall, 130 Queen Street West, Toronto, M5H 2N6. Or to osgoodesociety@lsuc.on.ca. The deadline for applications is May 15, 2018.

Call for nominations: John T. Saywell Prize for Canadian Constitutional Legal History (deadline May 15, 2018)

John T. Saywell Prize for Canadian Constitutional Legal History

The Saywell Prize is made possible by the generosity of his family and friends, to recognise the outstanding contribution to Canadian political and legal history of Professor Saywell. Among his other work Professor Saywell is the author of The Law Makers: Judicial Power And The Shaping of Canadian Federalism, published by the Osgoode Society in 2002.

The Saywell Prize is given bi-annually to the best new book in Canadian legal history, broadly defined, that makes an important contribution to an understanding of the constitution and/or federalism. In exceptional circumstances, the jury could also consider a seminal article or series of articles, some of the latter not written in the two-year period, to satisfy the objectives of the award.

The Saywell Prize will be awarded in 2018, for a book published in 2016 or 2017. The deadline for nominations is May 15, 2018. Please email nominations to j.phillips@utoronto.ca.

News from the Osgoode Society: Newsletter #4

THE OSGOODE SOCIETY FOR CANADIAN LEGAL HISTORY Established in 1979, the Osgoode Society publishes books on Canadian legal history and maintains an oral history archive.   Newsletter

Message from the President of the Osgoode Society Mark your calendars! With the busy months of spring upon us, the Osgoode Society has events that you'll want to add to your calendars. In particular, on May 28th Professors Jim Phillips and Philip Girard will deliver our next evening session on legal history, which is based on their upcoming volume on the history of law in Canada. The topic - Canada's three legal traditions - is fascinating. You won't want to miss it. Registration details are below. In addition, the Osgoode Society's Annual General Meeting will be held on June 14 from 5:30 to 7:30 in the Museum Room at Osgoode Hall. As always, this newsletter is also a chance for you to communicate with us. We welcome your comments and suggestions for inclusion in future newsletters. We look forward to seeing you soon.   Robert Sharpe, President Join the Society, Renew Your Membership, or Join our Mailing List LEGAL HISTORY LECTURES Thank you to everyone who joined us in January to hear Justice Sharpe speak about former Chief Justice Dickson in the Osgoode Society's first in a series of legal history lectures. On May 28th, Professors Jim Phillips and Philip Girard will give the second lecture, "Writing the Histories of Law in Canada: The Interaction of Three Legal Systems." Join us at 5:30 p.m. in the Museum Room at Osgoode Hall, 130 Queen Street West. To register, please contact Amanda Campbell or visit the event's section of the Osgoode Society's website. If you haven't renewed your membership yet, you'll need to do so before you can register. JUNE 14, 2018 ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING   Join us for the Osgoode Society's Annual General Meeting on June 14, 2018 from 5:30 to 7:30 in the Museum Room at Osgoode Hall, 130 Queen Street West. Jim Phillips and Philip Girard will present on their new book, A History of Law in Canada Volume I: Beginnings to 1866, which is the member’s selection for 2018. Read more... "THAT'S HISTORY"   As recent tensions with North Korea hark back to the days of the Cold War, consider that Canada's own involvement in the Korean War led to a secret order-in-council that allowed the RCMP to engage in covert phone-tapping against individuals, organizations, and even embassies on Canadian soil. After the ceasefire in 1953 and the original authorization expired, the Government of Louis St. Laurent decided to continue the program under the Official Secrets Act. Read more about what Historian Dennis Molinaro discovered about Project PICNIC, a program the federal government tried to keep secret until a request for access to documents was reported by the CBC. Read more...   ORAL HISTORY The Oral History program is now on Twitter! Follow us at @OSOralHistory to find out the latest news about our oral history program, including recently opened oral history interviews. Among these are a series of interviews with the former Chief Justice of Ontario (and former Attorney General), Roy McMurtry, which formed the basis of his memoirs published in 2015.  We also have interviews with former Attorneys General Howard Hampton and Marion Boyd, and former Premiers Bill Davis and Bob Rae. For more information on these or any other oral history interview, contact Trish McMahon.

Osgoode Society Oral History Program now on Twitter!

The Oral History program is now on Twitter! Follow us at @OSOralHistory to find out the latest news about our oral history program, including recently opened oral history interviews. Among these are a series of interviews with the former Attorney General and Chief Justice of Ontario Roy McMurtry that formed the basis of his memoirs published in 2015.  We also have interviews with Marion Boyd, the first non-lawyer to serve as Attorney General in Ontario, and former Premiers Bob Rae and Bill Davis. For more information on these or any other oral history interview, contact Trish McMahon.

Save the date: Osgoode Society AGM and reception June 14

The Osgoode Society AGM will be held June 14th at Osgoode Hall. More details to come, but our AGMs generally feature a short speech by the author(s) of the year's members' book, followed by a reception. This year, the members book is A History of the Law in Canada, volume 1. The authors of this volume are Jim Phillips and Philip Girard, erudite but always engaging speakers.

All members of the society are invited. If you are not currently a member join now! You can sign up for several levels of membership--order the members book and this year's optional extra (The Class Actions Controversy by Suzanne Chiodo), or just support the society, and have the opportunity to attend the AGM as well as our new evening lecture series.

This is a wonderful chance to hear cutting edge :) Canadian legal history, have a drink and some nibbles and chat with fellow legal history buffs. We look forward to seeing you there!

Call for papers: Family and Justice in the Archives: Histories of Intimacy in Transnational Perspective Concordia University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada 6-7 May 2019

via H-Canada

CALL FOR PAPERS
Family and Justice in the Archives will bring together historians, legal scholars, and others for a discussion about the challenges and opportunities offered by the use of legal records for exploring the intimate worlds of family life. The intimacies that interest us were located initially in the private spaces of lineage, estate, family, household, and bedroom; they are both dramatic and quotidian, material and emotional, and invariably tied up in gendered and generational hierarchies of power and privilege. At the same time, they are made accessible – years, generations, or centuries later – through the written traces left by public proceedings that occurred in legally sanctioned spaces of social regulation, from the notary’s office to the criminal or civil courtroom to the legislative arena. We are especially interested in the ways in which historians and other scholars have been unpacking the stories of intimacy revealed in processes of legal regulation to develop rich new insights about family, gender, sex, power, culture, identity, and daily life throughout history and across the planet.
Through this two-day symposium, we seek to encourage transnational conversations about families, the law, and the archives. The conveners have been exploring Quebec’s rich judicial archives with the following questions in mind: How did the judicial system transmit and reinforce hegemonic notions of class, race, ethnicity, and gender? How, when, and why did family disputes over property, honour, rights, or reputation cross the judicial threshold to become the object of court proceedings? What levels of intra-familal violence were tolerated and at what point were state authorities called upon to intervene? How did a particular blend of legal codes and cultures reflect the society’s wider assumptions about acceptable and respectable conduct for women and men, especially in the area of sexuality, courtship, family formation, and sexual identity? How and when did judicial rulings and court proceedings diverge from legal code or custom in response to local circumstances? Did some litigants manage to manoeuvre, manipulate, challenge, or even change the law through their encounters with the judicial apparatus? And what happened when individuals crossed the boundaries of the acceptable and respectable into transgressive, deviant, or criminalized behaviour?
Family and Justice in the Archives seeks to broaden those discussions radically outwards towards a wide range of times, places, cultures, and legal systems. Participants are invited to present work on how stories of intimacy – sexual, emotional, domestic, or otherwise – are revealed in and shaped by the legal archives they use. We hope to foster discussion of these questions across as broad a range of historical and geographical contexts as possible, pre-modern and modern, settler-colonial and Indigenous, with special attention to situations (like Quebec) where some form of legal pluralism prevailed. We welcome proposals for papers that engage with these questions and on a wide range topics that may include adoption, bigamy, child custody, divorce and separation, domestic violence, family honour, filial duty, inheritance, juvenile justice, marital obligations, parental authority, reproductive rights, sexual diversity, sexual violence, and sibling relationships, to name just these few.
Family and Justice in the Archives will inaugurate a new, biennial series and is presented in partnership with the Centre interuniversitaire d’études québécoises (Université Laval/Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières) and the Centre d’histoire des régulations sociales (Université du Québec à Montréal). The program committee is co-chaired by Professors Eric Reiter and Peter Gossage in the Department of History at Concordia University in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Those interested in participating are invited to please send a 250-word abstract and a one-page curriculum vitae (or brief author biography) to LAWS.Symposium@Concordia.ca by 31 May 2018.