A History of Canadian Legal Thought: Collected Essays (Osgoode Society for Canadian Legal History)

This volume in the Osgoode Society's distinguished series on the history of Canadian law is a collection of the principal essays of Professor Emeritus R.C.B. Risk, one of the pioneers of Canadian legal history and for many years regarded as its foremost authority on the history of Canadian legal thought. Frank Scott, Bora Laskin, W.P.M. Kennedy, John Willis and Edward Blake are among the better known figures whose thinking and writing about law are featured in this collection. But this compilation of the most important essays by a pioneer in Canadian legal history brings to light many other lesser known figures as well, whose writings covered a wide range of topics, from estoppel to the British North America Act to the purpose of legal education. Written over more than two decades, and covering the immediate post-Confederation period to the 1960s, these essays reveal a distinctive Canadian tradition of thinking about the nature and functions of law, one which Risk clearly takes pride in and urges us to celebrate. Contents 5 Foreword 7 Introduction 9 Part One. The Classical Age: Canadian Legal Thought in the Late Nineteenth Century 41 1. Constitutional Scholarship in the Late Nineteenth Century: Making Federalism Work 41 2. A.H.F. Lefroy: Common Law Thought in Late-Nineteenth-Century Canada – On Burying One’s Grandfather 74 3. Rights Talk in Canada in the Late Nineteenth Century: ‘The Good Sense and Right Feeling of the People’ 102 4. Blake and Liberty 138 5. John Skirving Ewart: The Legal Thought 160 6. Sir William R. Meredith, CJO: The Search for Authority 187 Part Two. The Challenge of Modernity: Canadian Legal Thought in the 1930s 219 7. Volume One of the Journal: A Tribute and a Belated Review 219 8. The Scholars and the Constitution: POGG and the Privy Council 241 9. John Willis: A Tribute 279 10. The Many Minds of W.P.M. Kennedy 308 11. Canadian Law Teachers in the 1930s: ‘When the World Was Turned Upside Down’ 349 Part Three. Postwar Developments 411 12. On the Road to Oz: Common Law Scholarship about Federalism after World War II 411