Request Username
Can't sign in? Forgot your username?
Enter your email address below and we will send you your username
This is the second of three volumes in an important collection that recounts the sweeping history of law in Canada. The period covered in this volume witnessed both continuity and change in the relationships among law, society, Indigenous peoples, and white settlers. The authors explore how law was as important to the building of a new urban industrial nation as it had been to the establishment of colonies of agricultural settlement and resource exploitation. The book addresses the most important developments in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries, including legal pluralism and the co-existence of European and Indigenous law. It pays particular attention to the Métis and the Red River Resistance, the Indian Act, and the origins and expansion of residential schools in Canada.
The book is divided into four parts: the law and legal institutions; Indigenous peoples and Dominion law; capital, labour, and criminal justice; and those less favoured by the law. A History of Law in Canada examines law as a dynamic process, shaped by and affecting other histories over the long term.
This book recounts the many and varied transformations in the history of law in Canada in the half century after Confederation.
Jim Phillips is a professor in the Faculty of Law and the Department of History at the University of Toronto.
Philip Girard is a professor of law at Osgoode Hall Law School at York University.
R. Blake Brown is a professor of history at Saint Mary’s University.
"Building upon the crucial insights offered in Volume One, this is a lucidly written and impressively researched synthesis and analysis of Canadian law and its institutions from early Confederation to the First World War. It adeptly weaves the political, social, and cultural contours of these histories, paying close attention to carcerality, Indigeneity, coloniality, race, gender, and the experiences of various minorities and workers under Canadian law. This is an invaluable work."
Barrington Walker, Associate Vice-President, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion; Professor, Department of History, Wilfrid Laurier University
"The pivotal decades from Confederation to the Great War offer a brilliant vista for three of Canada’s most renowned legal historians to work their magic. Volume Two of A History of Law in Canada offers us a remarkable window into the history of Canada’s elites, as well as its Indigenous peoples and racialized minorities – men and women who crafted a stunning legal framework to transform a new country."
Constance Backhouse, Distinguished University Professor and Professor of Law, University of Ottawa
"AHistory of Law in Canada Volume Two provides a comprehensive and compelling review of the development of law – common, civil, and Indigenous – in what we now know as Canada. The authors relate law to broader social, cultural, economic, and moral contexts, identify gaps in our knowledge, and raise questions for further academic inquiry. Like its predecessor, this book is required reading and a critical reference work for all legal historians in Canada. It will also provide inspiration for many new projects in legal history."
Lori Chambers, Professor of Gender and Women's Studies, Lakehead University
Winner- W. Wesley Pue Book Prize
Awarded by the Canadian Law and Society Association