You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
The essays in this volume reflect the exciting new directions in which legal history in the settler colonies of the British Empire has developed. The contributors show how local life and culture in selected settlements influenced, and was influenced by, the ideology of the rule of law that accompanied the British colonial project. Exploring themes of legal translation, local understandings, judicial biography, and “law at the boundaries,” they examine the legal cultures of dominions in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand to provide a contextual and comparative account of the “incomplete implementation of the British constitution” in these colonies.
In the late nineteenth century, European expansionism found one of its last homes in North America. While the American West was renowned for its lawlessness, the Canadian Prairies enjoyed a tamer reputation symbolized by the Mounties’ legendary triumph over chaos. Westward Bound debunks the myth of Canada’s peaceful West and the masculine conceptions of law and violence upon which it rests by shifting the focus from Mounties and whisky traders to criminal cases involving women between 1886 and 1940. Lesley Erickson reveals that judges’ and juries’ responses to the most intimate or violent acts reflected a desire to shore up the liberal order by maintaining boundaries between men and women, Native peoples and newcomers, and capital and labour. Victims and accused could only hope to harness entrenched ideas about masculinity, femininity, race, and class in their favour. The results, Erickson shows, were predictable but never certain. This fascinating exploration of hegemony and resistance in key contact zones draws prairie Canada into larger debates about law, colonialism, and nation building.
Oft-ignored in the study of Canadian history or dismissed as a vestige of colonial status, the governor general's office provides essential historical insight into Canada's constitutional evolution. In the nineteenth century, as today, individual governors general exercised considerable scope in interpreting their approach to the office. The era 1847-1878 witnessed profound changes in Canada's relationship with Britain, and in this new book, Barbara J. Messamore explores the nature of these changes through an examination of the role of the governor general. Guided by outmoded instructions and constitutional conventions that were not yet firmly established, the governors general of the time -...
Delgamuukw. Mabo. Ngati Apa. Recent cases have created a framework for litigating Aboriginal title in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. This book brings together distinguished scholars who show that our understanding of where the concept of Aboriginal title came from – and where it may be going – can also be enhanced by exploring legal developments in these former British colonies in a comparative, multidisciplinary framework. Contributors trace the role that courts and legislatures played in the extinguishment and acquisition of Aboriginal title and land. They then establish that although each country’s development was distinctive, common issues shaped – and continue to inform – indigenous peoples’ struggle for recognition. This path-breaking book offers a perspective on Aboriginal title that extends beyond national borders to consider similar developments in common law countries.
The Honourable Barry L. Strayer’s political memoir on Canadian constitutional reform, 1960–1982.
These essays look at key social, economic, and political issues of the times and show how they influenced the developing legal system.
People and Place presents a path-breaking collection of essays demonstrating the fascinating ways in which personalities interact with physical locale in shaping the law. Examining law through the framework of history, this anthology presents a mixture of innovative articles produced by established scholars as well as representatives of the next generation. The collection represents a rich array of interdisciplinary expertise, with authors who are law professors, historians, sociologists and criminologists. Their essays include studies into the lives of judges and lawyers, rape victims, prostitutes, religious sect leaders, and common criminals. The geographic scope touches Canada, the United...
None
Knafla and his contributors explore the common problems and issues that emerge from the study of class and gender in criminal prosecutions, ranging from late medieval Europe to the early 20th century. The chapters demonstrate that conceptions of crime and criminal behavior are influenced decisively by the roles of class, gender, and later race as societies evolve in search of continuity and conformity. The seven chapters in this volume, together with a major book review essay and critical reviews of sixteen major works in the area, reinforce the series as a major forum for exploring new directions in criminal justice research as it relates to issues and problems of class, gender, and race in...
This volume marks the 2007 centenary of the Supreme Court of Alberta. These essays examine the extent to which the Court articulated an Albertan response to the varied legal questions of the past century. Canvassing the Court's jurisprudential history, the volume includes thematic essays examining First Nations' hunting rights, oil and gas law, water law, gender, the Hutterites and religious freedom, and family law. Additional essays detail the court's history through its early personnel, the World War I crisis over the court's independence, and the question of whether the court voiced an Albertan take on the constitution. What emerges is not the image of a maverick judiciary, but rather a court that pursued legal principles that would stand anywhere in the nation.