Robert Sharpe, My Life in the Law: Lawyer, Scholar, Judge, published by the University of Toronto Press.
As the title suggests, this book is a personal reflection on Robert Sharpe’s long, varied and influential career as a lawyer, scholar and judge, which incudes a decade as the President of the Osgoode Society. After giving an account of his early life and education, Sharpe examines his time in the law starting with being a student in the late 1960s. In those years, and as a young lawyer in the early 1970s, Canadian law focused on legal doctrine, heavily influenced by English law. As a legal academic in the 1970s to the 1990s Sharpe participated in Canadian law’s emergence from the shadow of narrow legalistic formalism, and then dealt with that evolution from the very different perspective of a judge and a legal history scholar during the first 25 years of this century
Throughout the book, Sharpe writes about the people who influenced his trajectory. Almost by chance, he articled and practiced with a small firm, MacKinnon, McTaggart where he was exposed to several exceptional lawyers who later became judges. From his Oxford doctoral supervisors, Ian Brownlie and HWR Wade, he learned how to tackle a major research project. As a U of T law professor, he enjoyed the support of his colleagues who encouraged him to become an engaged scholar. His three-year experience working as Chief Justice Brian Dickson’s Executive Legal Officer prepared him for his 25-year career as a judge, bearing the responsibility of passing judgment on one’s fellow citizens and working as a judge in a collegial setting. Written in an engaging and accessible style, this memoir tells the story of a man fascinated by the law who actively participated in Canadian law’s transformation over the last half century.
