Brian Dickson: A Judge's Journey
2003
Published for the Osgoode Society by the University of Toronto Press
Cost: $36.75
Student Price: $15.00
Read review(s)
Return to 2000-2003 book list
Description
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 corporate lawyer, Brian Dickson shocked his
partners
by accepting an appointment as a Manitoba trial judge in 1963.
Over the next twenty seven years, including seventeen at the Supreme Court of Canada, Dickson
emerged
as one of Canada's greatest judges.
The Dickson years at the Supreme Court were a time of unprecedented constitutional controversy and
legal change.
On his arrival, the Court was preoccupied with routine disputes; by his retirement as Chief Justice
in 1990,
the Court had become a major national institution and the Court's decisions were the subject of
intense public
interest and concern.
As this biography of Chief Justice Dickson demonstrates, this striking transformation in the
Canadian judicial
system was matched by his own personal transformation.
Justice Robert Sharpe and Professor Kent Roach have written an engaging and accessible biography of
one of
Canada's greatest legal figures.
Reviews
This is the first serious attempt to profile this towering figure in law.
It is unlikely to have many rivals in the near future.
In marrying Dickson's life experiences to his evolving rulings, the authors have produced a
penetrating piece of work.
... Their exclusive access to a vast wealth of Dickson's private papers brought them a mother lode
of information
that reached well beyond Dickson himself and into the innermost workings of the court.
... Both as a biography and as an exposition of judging at the highest level, this is a vital piece
of writing.
Were it a legal judgment, it would constitute a landmark. Kirk Makin, Globe and Mail, January 3, 2004
We come away...with a greater respect for the institution [of the Supreme Court] and for the heavy responsibility borne by judges. Brian A. Crane, Ottawa Law Review, vol. 36, 2004
