Membership
Join the Osgoode Society
Established in 1979, the Osgoode Society for Canadian Legal History publishes books on Canadian legal history, creates and preserves an oral history archive, and puts on legal history lectures and similar events.
Since 1981 the Society has published 129 books, including our 2025 books, on a remarkably diverse range of topics in Canadian legal history, and has recorded more than 700 oral histories from various members of the legal profession.
We have five categories of membership. With a regular membership, at $75, you receive the annual members’ book. The members’ book is also included with student memberships, which are $25. If you wish to not only join the Society but also contribute a donation to support its work, you can take out an Individual Sustaining Membership for $175. This brings you the members’ book and all the other benefits of membership, and a charitable tax donation for $100.
We also have a category of membership called the McMurtry Circle, at $500. Members of the McMurtry Circle receive the members’ book, a certificate of appreciation signed by our founder, the Hon. R. Roy McMurtry, and a charitable donation receipt for $425. Editor-in-Chief Professor Jim Phillips is a member of the McMurtry Circle, and encourages others to join. Society President Robert Sharpe used to be a member but has now become a patron. Finally, to respond to some of our members who tell us that they want to support the Osgoode Society but do not want our membership book, we have a ‘Membership – No Book’ category at $60.
The benefits of membership other than the members’ book and being able to support the most successful legal-historical organization in the common law world, include a regular newsletter giving notice of our events (five between January and May 2025) and other news, the ability to buy our optional extra books at a discount price compared to that charged by the publisher, and participation in our book sale specials – a bulk discount at any time and special sales at year’s end.
2025 MEMBERSHIPS ARE NOW AVAILABLE FOR PURCHASE. HOWEVER OPTIONAL EXTRA BOOKS ARE NOT YET AVAILABLE AS OF JANUARY 14. PLEASE CHECK BACK THE WEEK OF JANUARY 20.
Members’ Book 2025
Our members’ book for 2025 is 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.
Optional Extras
We will also publish three optional extras in 2025. The first of these is Eric Adams and Jordan Stanger-Ross, Challenging Exile: Japanese Canadians and the Wartime Constitution, published by the University of British Columbia Press. Eric Adams is Professor of Law at the University of Alberta, Jorden Stanger-Ross is Professor of History at the University of Victoria. After the Second World War ended, Canada planned to banish over 10,000 Canadians of Japanese descent to Japan. This book is the story of the making of the laws of exile, the legal system that made it possible, and the resilience and resistance of people facing its injustice. It follows the lives of Japanese Canadians denied basic rights of citizenship, forced from their homes, stripped of their livelihoods and possessions, and pressured to accept exile during the Second World War. The authors examine the people behind these draconian measures, the politicians who devised the exile in crucibles of racist thinking, contortions of logic, and callous indifference. The book concludes with the exile in court. In hearings before the Supreme Court of Canada and Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, lawyers and judges contemplated the meaning of citizenship, race, and rights under the wartime constitution and in the postwar world in decisions now largely forgotten. As a history that unfolded in a period of global conflict, sharpened borders, and racist suspicion, the exile of Japanese Canadians – an enduring story of the power and fragility of citizenship and the constitution – remains a vital story for today.
Our second optional extra is Carolyn Strange, Fatal Confession: A Girl’s Murder, a Man’s Execution, and the Fitton Case. Published by the University of British Columbia Press. Carolyn Strange is Professor of History at the Australian National University. In the mid-1950s most Canadians still believed that murder merited the death penalty. It was also a time when modern approaches to combat the problem of sex crime were first implemented. This book traces the tension between those themes through the rape-murder of a girl and its legal consequences. R. v Fitton was a unique landmark in the criminal law and a window on Canadian society. The murder of children, particularly sex murders, invariably produces strong reactions, but the character of those responses is tied to time and place. This murder in Toronto in January 1956 flushed out ambivalence over the culpability of a males tempted by precocious females, disagreements over latitude of police to extract confessions, and disquiet over the royal prerogative of mercy’s administration by the federal cabinet. This crime was no mystery: Robert Fitton admitted to police that he killed Linda Lampkin. Yet, there were other mysteries. Why was Fitton sentenced and convicted of murder? Why, despite a robust defence at trial, on appeal and before the Supreme Court, was he executed at Toronto’s Don Jail on 21 November 1956? Why was he executed despite being recommended for mercy by both the trial jury and the trial judge? By weaving politics and culture into legal history and biography, Carolyn Strange answers these questions.
Our final optional extra for 2025 is Jim Phillips, I Did Not Commit Adultery: Marital Conflict and the Law in Ontario in the 1870s, published by the University of Toronto Press. Jim Phillips is a Professor in the Faculty of Law at the University of Toronto, cross-appointed to the Department of History and the Centre for Criminology and Socio-Legal Studies. He is also Editor-in-Chief of the Osgoode Society. This book chronicles the breakdown of the marriage of Robert and Eliza Campbell, of Whitby, in 1873, which precipitated a six-year battle in the Ontario courts and the Parliament of Canada. In the Court of Common Pleas Robert Campbell successfully sued the man he alleged had seduced his wife for criminal conversation, and Eliza Campbell successfully sued Robert’s brother James Campbell for defamation. Eliza Campbell failed, however, to get an order for alimony in the Court of Chancery. When all this litigation was concluded Robert Campbell petitioned Parliament for an Act of Divorce, the only way to get a divorce in Ontario before 1930. In 1876 he failed to persuade the Senate divorce committee that Eliza had committed adultery, the only ground for a divorce at that time, but Eliza succeeded in having an Act of Separation passed in her favour. This book is a detailed study of how the law governed married women in the later nineteenth century, and along the way also looks at the operations of the civil courts, the forensic skills of leading members of the Ontario legal profession, constitutional law, and parliamentary divorce, the last a topic never before examined in detail by Canadian historians.
Please note that these titles have not yet been published. We expect a publication date in the fall but will send an update when we have more information. The book(s) you order below will be automatically sent to you.
Your membership in the Society helps us continue to promote and to preserve Canadian Legal History. Join us!
Renew or Join as an Individual Member with book for 2025 – $75
Includes the 2025 member’s book – Robert Sharpe, My Life in the Law: Lawyer, Scholar, Judge
Optional Extras: You can choose to include the optional extras after clicking the join now link. There is an option to buy both optional extras and save $10.
Renew or Join as an Student Member for 2025 – $25
Includes the 2025 member’s book – Robert Sharpe, My Life in the Law: Lawyer, Scholar, Judge
Optional Extras: You can choose to include the optional extras after clicking the join now link. There is an option to buy both optional extras and save $10.
Renew or Join as an Individual Sustaining Member for 2025 – $175
Includes the 2025 member’s book – Robert Sharpe, My Life in the Law: Lawyer, Scholar, Judge
Optional Extras: You can choose to include the optional extras after clicking the join now link. There is an option to buy both optional extras and save $10.
Renew or Join as an McMurtry Circle Member for 2025 – $500
Includes the 2025 member’s book – Robert Sharpe, My Life in the Law: Lawyer, Scholar, Judge
Optional Extras: You can choose to include the optional extras after clicking the join now link. There is an option to buy both optional extras and save $10.
Renew or Join as an Individual Member no book for 2025 – $60
Members’ book is not included.
Gift Membership for 2025 – $75
All Gift Memberships include the 2025 member’s book – Heenan Blaikie: The Making and Unmaking of a Great Canadian Law Firm
Optional Extras: You can choose to include the optional extras after clicking the buy now link. There is an option to buy both optional extras and save $10.
A portion of the individual sustaining and McMurtry Circle memberships entitle the member to a charitable receipt.