G. Blaine Baker was a Professor Emeritus at McGill University before his untimely death in 2018. Prior to joining McGill in 1981 he was a Bigelow Fellow at the University of Chicago Law School. During his time at McGill he served as Associate Dean (Academic) from 1999 to 2001 and Associate Dean (Graduate Studies) from 1997 to 1999. He has also been Visiting Professor at the University of Toronto Faculty of Law (1988-1989, 1995-1996, 2006-07 and 2011-16), Scholar in Residence at Borden, Ladner, Gervais (2001-2002) and Visiting Professor at Osgoode Hall Law School (1987-1988, 1994-1995).
Blaine Baker has won publishing awards from the American Society for Legal History and the Canadian Historical Association. He has also been awarded the McGill University Teaching Excellence Award on three occasions. He is the Director of the Wellington County Law Association History Project and a member of the Alternative Dispute Resolution Institute of Ontario.
Osgoode Society for Canadian Legal History Books
Essays in the History of Canadian Law, Volume XI: Quebec and the Canadas (Toronto: The Osgoode Society and University of Toronto Press, 2013) pp. 582 (editor with Donald Fyson)
R.C.B. Risk, A History of Canadian Legal Thought: Collected Essays (Toronto: The Osgoode Society and University of Toronto Press, 2006), 434 pp. (editor with Jim Phillips)
Essays in the History of Canadian Law, Vol VIII: In Honour of R.C.B. Risk (Toronto: The Osgoode Society and University of Toronto Press, 1999), 585 pp. (editor with Jim Phillips)
Chapters in Osgoode Society Books
‘Introduction: Quebec and the Canadas, 1760 to 1867: A Legal Historigraphy’ in Blaine Baker, Donald Fyson, eds. Essays in the History of Canadian Law, Volume XI: Quebec and the Canadas (Toronto: The Osgoode Society and University of Toronto Press, 2013) pp. 3 – 95.
‘Strategic Benthamism: Rehabilitating United Canada’s Bar through Criminal Law Codification, 1847-54’ in Jim Phillips, R. Roy McMurtry and Jack Saywell, eds., Essays in the History of Canadian Law Vol X: A Tribute to Peter N. Oliver (Toronto: The Osgoode Society and University of Toronto Press, 2008), pp. 257-319.
‘Introduction’ in R.C.B. Risk, A History of Canadian Legal Thought: Collected Essays (Toronto: The Osgoode Society and University of Toronto Press, 2006), pp. 3 – 29 (with Jim Phillips).
‘R.C.B. Risk’s Canadian Legal History’ in G Blaine Baker and Jim Phillips, eds., Essays in the History of Canadian Law: In Honour of R.C.B. Risk (Toronto: The Osgoode Society and University of Toronto Press, 1999), pp. 17-60.
‘Law Practice and Statecraft in Mid-Nineteenth-Century Montreal: The Torrance-Morris Firm, 1848 to 1868’ in C. Wilton, ed., Beyond the Law: Lawyers and Business in Canada 1830 to 1930 (Toronto: The Osgoode Society and Butterworths, 1990), pp. 45-91.
‘Legal Education in Upper Canada, 1785 to 1889: The Law Society as Educator’ in D.H. Flaherty, ed., Essays in the History of Canadian Law, Volume II (Toronto: The Osgoode Society and University of Toronto Press, 1983) pp. 49-142.
Other Legal History Publications
Entries for “William Proudfoot” and “William Albert Reeve” in the Dictionary of Canadian Biography, available online at www.biographi.ca
‘Testamentary Archeology in Late-Victorian Ontario: William Martin’s Little, Posthumous Legal System’ Canadian Journal of Law and Society, Vol. 30, 2015, pp. 1-20.
‘Popularizing the Rule of Law: Sheldon Amos and the International Scientific Series, 1874-1909, Journal of Legal History, Vol 33, 2012, pp. 151-184.
‘Story’d Paradigms for the Nineteenth-Century Display of Anglo-American Legal Doctrine’ in Angela Fernandez and Markus Dubber, eds., Law Books in Action: Essays on the Anglo-American Legal Treatise (Oxford: Hart Publishing, 2012), pp. 82-107.
‘Willis on Cultured Public Authorities’ University of Toronto Law Journal, Vol 55, 2005, pp. 335-360.
A Noble Roster: One Hundred and Fifty Years of Law at McGill (Montreal: Gelfand-Martineau, 1998), 156 pp. (editor with John E. C. Brierley, Nicholas Kasirer, and Stephen J. Toope)
‘Public Frivolity and Patrician Confidence: Lower Canada’s “Brothers-in-Law”, 1827 to 1833’ in J.E.C. Brierley et. al., eds. Mélanges Paul André Crépeau, (Cowansville, P.Q.: Yvon Blais, 1996), pp. 43-73.
‘The Province of Post-Confederation Rights’ University of Toronto Law Journal, Vol 45, 1995, pp. 77-100.
“Civil Law – The French Colonies” and “Legal Professions – The French Colonies” in J.E. Cooke, ed., Encyclopedia of the North American Colonies, vol. 1 (New York: Charles Scribner, 1993) 430-432, 443-445
‘Interstate Choice of Law and Early-American Constitutional Nationalism’ McGill Law Journal, Vol 38, 1992, pp. 454-511.
‘Ordering the urban Canadian law office and its entrepreneurial hinterland, 1825 to 1875’ University of Toronto Law Journal, Vol 48, 1988, pp. 175-251.
‘So Elegant a Web: Providential Order and the Rule of Secular Law in Early Nineteenth Century Upper Canada’ University of Toronto Law Journal, Vol 38, 1988, pp. 184-205.
Sources in the Law Library of McGill University for a Reconstruction of the Legal Culture of Quebec, 1760-1890 (Montreal: McGill University and Montreal History Project, 1987), 276 pp. (with K.E. Fisher, V. Masciotra and B. Young)
‘The Reconstitution of Upper Canadian Legal Thought in the Late-Victorian Empire’ Law and History Review, Vol 3, 1985, pp. 219-292.
‘The Juvenile Advocate Society, 1821 to 1826: Self-Proclaimed Schoolroom for Upper Canada’s Governing Class’ Historical Papers of the Canadian Historical Association, Vol 20, 1985, pp. 74-101.
“A Course in Canadian Legal History” Now & Then, Vol 2, 1984, pp. 56-62
Entries for “William Warren Baldwin”, “Jonathan Belcher”, “William Hume Blake”, William Henry Draper”, “Joseph-Francois Lafitau”, “Augustus Henry Frazer Lefroy”, “Helen Emma McGill”, “David Mills”, “Sir William Mulock”, “Emily Cowan Murphy”, “William Smith”, “Louis-Guillaume Verrier”, “Richard Chapman Weldon”, “Solomon White” in A.W.B. Simpson, ed., Biographical Dictionary of the Common Law (London: Butterworth, 1984).
‘Legal Identity: From Maine and Durkheim to Graveson, Tribe and Vining: An Essay on Legal Identity: The Coming of Age of Public Law’ University of Western Ontario Law Review, Vol 19, 1981, pp. 307-341.
Reports of Family Law Reprint Series, 1824-1971 (Toronto: Carswell, 1979-81), 2029 pp. (editor with James G. McLeod and Gary P. Rodrigues).
