Bora Laskin: Bringing Law to Life,
2005
Published for the Osgoode Society by the University of Toronto Press
Cost: $45.00
Student Price: $20.00
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Description
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, as a human rights activist, university professor and labour arbitrator,
Bora Laskin used the law to make Canada a better place for workers, racial and ethnic minorities,
and the disadvantaged.
Then, in what he called his 'accidental career' as a judge on the Ontario Court of Appeal and later chief
justice of Canada, he embarked on a quest to make the judiciary more responsive to modern Canadian expectations
of justice and fundamental rights.
In the struggles of a man who fought anti-Semitism, corporate capital, omnipotent university boards,
the Law Society of Upper Canada and his judicial colleagues, Philip Girard chronicles the emergence of modern Canada.
Reviews
Bora Laskin: Bringing Law to Life, the first full biography of Laskin is a timely contribution
it focuses of the life and thought of Canada's first and arguably only, popular judicial icon.
His description of Laskin's jurisprudential writing is clear enough for general readers to follow,
but nuanced and specific enough also to constitute an important contribution to academic legal scholarship. Mark Freiman, Literary Review of Canada, 2005.
In recent years, Canadian judicial biography has taken a sharp turn toward the big, serious and unsentimental.
... Philip Girard's Bora Laskin: Bringing Law to Life ...may be the best judicial biography yet.
Christopher Moore,
Law Times, November 5, 2005
A thoroughly researched and sparklingly written biography. Lorne Sossin, University of Toronto Law Journal, vol 59, 2009
