Barry Cahill is an independent historian focusing on Atlantic Canada. He has written numerous historical pieces on the region’s legal history, including the legal profession, the judiciary, and blacks and the. He has also written extensively on religious history, with a focus on Canadian Presbyterianism. He is also a former editor of the Nova Scotia Historical Review.
Mr. Cahill is also a Certified Information Access and Privacy Officer in the Economic and Rural Development and Tourism Department of the Government of Nova Scotia. He was formerly a Corporate Projects Analyst and Senior Archivist in the Nova Scotia Archives and Records Management Department of the Government of Nova Scotia.
Mr. Cahill can be reached at yorkhill@eastlink.ca.escription
Osgoode Society for Canadian Legal History Books
The Supreme Court of Nova Scotia, 1754-2004: From Imperial Bastion to Provincial Oracle (Toronto: The Osgoode Society and University of Toronto Press, 2004), 515 pp. (editor with Philip Girard and Jim Phillips).
‘The Thousandth Man’: A Biography Of James McGregor Stewart (Toronto: The Osgoode Society and University of Toronto Press, 2000), 266 pp.
Chapters in Osgoode Society Books
‘The Making of an ‘Imperial Pan-Africanist’: Henry Sylvester Williams as a University Law Student in Canada’ in Barrington Walker, ed., The African Canadian Legal Odyssey: Historical Essays (Toronto: Osgoode Society for Canadian Legal History and University of Toronto Press, 2012), pp. 84 – 98.
“Origins to Confederation: The Supreme Court, 1754-1867,” in P. Girard, J. Phillips, and J.B. Cahill, eds., The Supreme Court of Nova Scotia 1754-2004: From Imperial Bastion to Provincial Oracle (Toronto: Osgoode Society for Canadian Legal History and University of Toronto Press, 2004), pp. 53 – 139 (with Jim Phillips).
‘The ‘Hoffman Rebellion’ (1753) and ‘Hoffman’s Trial’ (1754): Constructive High Treason and Seditious Conspiracy in Nova Scotia under the Stratocracy’ in Frank Murray Greenwood and Barry Wright, eds., Canadian State Trials, Volume I: Law, Politics and Security Measures, 1608 1837 (Toronto: The Osgoode Society and University of Toronto Press, 1996), pp. 72 97.
‘R. v. Howe (1835) for Seditious Libel: A Tale of Twelve Magistrates’ in Frank Murray Greenwood and Barry Wright, eds., Canadian State Trials, Volume I: Law, Politics and Security Measures, 1608 1837 (Toronto: The Osgoode Society and University of Toronto Press, 1996), pp. 547 – 575.
‘Corporate Entrepreneurship in Atlantic Canada: The Stewart Law Firm, 1915 1955’ in Carol Wilton, ed., Inside the Law: Canadian Law Firms in Historical Perspective (Essays in the History of Canadian Law, Volume VII) (Toronto: The Osgoode Society and University of Toronto Press, 1996), pp. 280 – 319 (with Gregory P. Marchildon).
Other Legal History Publications
‘ “Everybody Called Her Frank:” The Odyssey of an Early Woman Lawyer in New Brunswick’ Journal of New Brunswick Studies, Vol 2, 2011, pp. 55 – 70.
‘Legislated Privilege or Common-Law Right: Provincial State Intervention and the First Women Lawyers in Nova Scotia’ in Janet Guildford and Suzanne Morton, eds., Making Up the State: Women in 20th Century Atlantic Canada (Fredericton: Acadiensis Press, 2010), pp. 79 – 92.
‘Slave Life and Slave Law in Colonial Prince Edward Island, 1769-1825’ Acadiensis: Journal of the History of the Atlantic Region, Vol 38, 2009, pp. 29 – 51 (with Harvey Amani Whitfield).
‘Ministerial Misfeasance: “R. v. Morris and a Unique Early Privacy Breach”’ Dalhousie Law Journal, Vol 32, 2009, pp. 367 – 380.
Frank Manning Covert: Fifty Years in the Practice of Law (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2004), 228 pp. (editor).
‘Sedition in Nova Scotia: R. v. Howe (1835) and the ‘Contested Legality’ of Seditious Libel’ University of New Brunswick Law Journal, Vol 51, 2002, pp. 95 – 140.
‘Removing a ‘Section 96’ Judge: An Historical Case Study’ Dalhousie Law Journal, Vol 23, 2000, pp. 233 – 248.
‘Birth of a Lawyer: James McGregor Stewart and the Halifax Bar on the Eve of the Great War’ Journal of the Royal Nova Scotia Historical Society, Vol 3, 2000, pp. 22 – 32.
‘First Things in Africadia; Or, The Trauma of Being a Black Lawyer in Late Victorian Saint John’ University of New Brunswick Law Journal, Vol 47, 1998, pp. 367 – 377.
‘The Old Judge in The Old Judge: Nostalgic Tory Loyalism as the Key to Understanding Nova Scotia’s Pre-Modern Legal Culture’ in Richard A. Davies, ed., The Haliburton Bicentenary Chaplet (Wolfville: Gaspereau, 1997), pp. 251 – 267.
‘Howe (1835), Dixon (1920) and McLachlan (1923): Comparative Perspectives on the Legal History of Sedition’ University of New Brunswick Law Journal, Vol 45, 1996, pp. 281 – 307.
‘A Forerunner of J.B. McLachlan? Sedition, Libel and Manipulating the Myth of Howe’ Collections of the Royal Nova Scotia Historical Society, Vol 44, 1996, pp. 189 – 199.
‘Isaac Deschamps’s Pisiquid Diary 1756-57’ Nova Scotia Historical Review, Vol 16, 1996, pp. 99 108
‘Attorney General Uniacke’s Advice to a Young Lawyer, 1798’ Nova Scotia Historical Review, Vol 15, 1995, pp. 127 – 146.
‘Afro-Nova Scotian history in microcosm’ New Maritimes, Vol 13, 1995, pp. 25 – 29.
‘Habeas Corpus and Slavery in Nova Scotia: R. v. Hecht, ex parte Rachel, 1798’ University of New Brunswick Law Journal, Vol 44, 1995, pp. 179 – 209.
‘From Imperium to Colony: Reinventing a Metropolitan Legal Institution in Late Eighteenth Century Nova Scotia’ in Donald W. Nichol, ed., TransAtlantic Crossings: Eighteenth-Century Explorations (St. John’s: Memorial University Press, 1995), pp. 11 – 24.
‘Slavery and the Judges of Loyalist Nova Scotia’ University of New Brunswick Law Journal, Vol 43, 1994, pp. 73 – 135.
‘Sedition in Nova Scotia: R. v. Wilkie (1820) and the Incontestable Illegality of Seditious Libel before R. v. Howe (1835)’ Dalhousie Law Journal, Vol 44, 1994, pp. 458 – 497.
‘The Sedition Trial of Timothy Houghton: Repression in a Marginal New England Planter Township during the Revolutionary Years’ Acadiensis, Vol 24, 1994, pp. 35 – 58.
‘’How far English Laws are in force here’: Nova Scotia’s First Century of Reception Law Jurisprudence’ University of New Brunswick Law Journal, Vol 42, 1993, pp. 113 – 153.
‘The ‘Colored Barrister’: The Short Life and Tragic Death of James Robinson Johnston, 1876 1915’ Dalhousie Law Journal, Vol 40, 1992, pp. 336 – 379.
‘The Autobiography of Chief Justice Sir William Young, aet. 21’ Nova Scotia Historical Review, Vol 12, 1992, pp. 125 – 133.
‘The Origin and Evolution of the Attorney and Solicitor in the Legal Profession of Nova Scotia’ Dalhousie Law Journal, Vol 38, 1991, pp. 277 – 295.
‘A Man and his Lawyer: The Friendship of J.F.W. Desbarres and Richard Gibbons’ Collections of the Royal Nova Scotia Historical Society, Vol 43, 1991, pp. 101 – 125.
‘The Court of Exchequer (1775): The Stillbirth or Short Life of a Prerogative Court in Eighteenth Century Nova Scotia’ in Roland G. Bonnell, ed., Facets of the Eighteenth Century: Descriptive, Social and Normative Discourse (North York: Captus University Publications, 1991), pp. 11- 26.
‘A Loyalist Attorney’s Critique of the Supreme Court of Nova Scotia, 1786’ Nova Scotia Historical Review, Vol 11, 1991, pp. 151 – 155.
‘Henry Dundas’s Plan for Reforming the Judicature of British North America, 1792’ University of New Brunswick Law Journal, Vol 39, 1990, pp. 158 – 170.
‘Bleak House Revisited: The Records and Papers of the Court of Chancery of Nova Scotia, 1751 1855’ Archivaria, Vol 29, 1989, pp. 149 – 167.
‘A Lawyer Goes to War: Stephen DeLancey and the American Revolution’ Loyalist Gazette, Vol 25, 1988, pp. 30 – 35.
‘Richard Gibbons ‘Review’ of the Administration of Justice in Nova Scotia, 1774’ University of New Brunswick Law Journal, Vol 37, 1988, pp. 34 – 58.
‘The Solicitor General Redivivus’ Nova Scotia Historical Review, Vol 8, 1988, pp. 102 – 104.
‘James Monk’s ‘Observations on the Courts of Law in Nova Scotia’,1775’ University of New Brunswick Law Journal, Vol 36, 1987, pp. 131 – 145.
‘’Fide et fortitudine vivo’: The Career of Chief Justice Bryan Finucane’ Collections of the Royal Nova Scotia Historical Society, Vol 42, 1986, pp. 153 – 169.
‘Abortive Attempts to Codify English Criminal Law’ Parliamentary History, Vol 11, 1992, pp. 1 – 39.
‘The Craftsmanship of Bias: Sedition and the Winnipeg Strike Trial 1919’ Manitoba Law Journal, Vol 14, 1984, pp. 39 – 52.
‘Historical Perspective on the Statute of Uses’ Manitoba Law Journal, Vol 9, 1979, pp. 409 – 433.
‘Unpredictable and Uncertain: Criminal Law in the Canadian North West before 1886’ Alberta Law Review, Vol 17, 1979, pp. 497 – 512.
‘Foundations of British Policy in the Acadian Expulsion’ Dalhousie Review, Vol 57, 1977, pp. 709 – 725.
‘The Meaning of Treason in 1885’ Saskatchewan History, Vol 28, 1975, pp. 65 – 73.
