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The Court of Queen’s Bench of Manitoba 1870-1950: A Biographical History
by Dale Brawn, Professor, Department of Law & Justice, Laurentian University. Published wth the University of Toronto Press, 2006. This study of the Manitoba judiciary is the first complete biographical history of a provincial bench. The relative youth of Manitoba and the small size of its legal profession makes possible an exceptionally detailed investigation of the… Read more »
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The Conventional Man: The Diaries of Ontario Chief Justice Robert A. Harrison, 1856-1878
edited with an introduction by Peter N. Oliver, Professor of History, York University. Published with the University of Toronto Press, 2003. Between 1856 and 1878, the year of his death, Robert A. Harrison, a Toronto lawyer, often described as the outstanding common law lawyer of his generation in Canada and Chief Justice of Ontario in the… Read more »
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Chief Justice W.R. Jackett: By the Law of the Land
by Richard W. Pound. Published with McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1999. When Richard Pound told us he was working on a biography of Wilbur Jackett, former Chief Justice of the Federal Court of Canada, and asked us to consider publication, we were pleased and somewhat sceptical. We had recently published Ian Bushnell’s history of the Federal Court… Read more »
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Canadian State Trials, Volume I: Law, Politics, and Security Measures, 1608-1837
edited by F. Murray Greenwood, Emeritus Professor of History, University of British Columbia and Barry Wright, Professor, Department of Law, Carleton University. Published with the University of Toronto Press, 1996. State trials reveal much about a nation’s insecurities and shed light on important themes in political, constitutional, and legal history. In Canada, perceived and real threats… Read more »
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Canadian Maverick: The Life of Ivan C. Rand
by William Kaplan. Published with the University of Toronto Press, 2009. Ivan Rand had a long, varied and remarkable career. He is best known for his Supreme Court of Canada judgments in a series of cases emanating from Quebec in the 1950s and dealing with civil rights, cases which established limits on the government’s ability to… Read more »
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Brian Dickson: A Judge’s Journey
by Robert Sharpe, Justice of the Court of Appeal for Ontario and Professor Kent Roach, Faculty of Law, University of Toronto. Published with the University of Toronto Press, 2003. After coming of age during the Depression on the Prairies, being severely wounded in World War II, and after a career as a successful and prosperous… Read more »
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Bora Laskin: Bringing Law to Life
by Philip Girard, Professor of Law, History & Canadian Studies at Dalhousie University, 2005. Published with the University of Toronto Press. In any account of Canadian law in the 20th century, Bora Laskin looms large. This biography explores in vivid detail the life and times of a restless man on a mission. In his first career,… Read more »
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Judging Bertha Wilson: Law As Large As Life
by Ellen Anderson, Lawyer, Barrie, Ontario. Published with the University of Toronto Press, 2001. Bertha Wilson is the first woman to be appointed to the Ontario Court of Appeal. She is the first woman to be appointed to the Supreme Court of Canada at that critical moment when the Charter was entrenched. Nevertheless, Bertha Wilson has… Read more »
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Bad Judgment: The Case of Mr. Justice Leo A. Landreville
by William Kaplan. Published with the University of Toronto Press, 1996. Out of Print. Bad Judgment is a quintessential fall-from-grace story about a man from humble beginnings who rose to the top of the legal profession in Canada, only to be removed from the bench because of his bad judgment, the intolerant attitudes of the… Read more »
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Aggressive in Pursuit: The Life of Justice Emmett Hall
by Frederick Vaughan, formerly of the Political Science Department, University of Guelph. Published with the University of Toronto Press, 2004. In 1963 Prime Minister John Diefenbaker elevated Chief Justice Hall of Saskatchewan to the Supreme Court of Canada. This judicial biography focuses on Hall’s career as defence lawyer, and civil litigator, his position as a civil… Read more »