Toronto Legal History Group

The Toronto Legal History group is an informal evening seminar that meets 10-12 times a year in the evenings. Participants are graduate students and faculty in law and history from U of T, York, McMaster and other institutions, as well as law students and members of the profession interested in legal history. If you would like to be put on the e-mail list and to receive the papers by e-mail, please e-mail j.phillips@utoronto.ca.

The group meets in Flavelle House, Faculty of Law, University of Toronto, at 6.30. The schedule for the academic year 2009-2010 is posted immediately below. Schedules for previous academic years are also reproduced here.

Schedule 2009-2010

Wednesday September 16 - Almos Tassonyi, Senior Economist, Government of Ontario: "Good Housekeeping: The Imposition of the Hard Budget Constraint on Municipalities in Ontario in the Great Depression."

Wednesday September 30 - Simon Stern, University of Toronto: "The origins of the Reasonable Person"

Wednesday October 14 - Allan Greer, McGill University and University of Toronto: "Commons and Enclosure in John Locke's America"

Wednesday October 21 - Robert Gordon, Yale University: "Do Lawyers Promote the Rule of Law?"

Wednesday November 4 - Angela Fernandez, University of Toronto: The Hunt for the Fox, Pierson v. Post, a Case in Context.

Wednesday November 18 - Bonny Ibhawoh, McMaster University: "African Appeals to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, 1850-1960"

Wednesday December 2 - Michael Marrus, University of Toronto: "Some Measure of Justice: The Holocaust Era Restitution Campaign of the 1990s."

Wednesday January 13 - John Beattie, University of Toronto: "Detection: The Bow Street Runners at Work"

Wednesday January 27 - Lyndsay Campbell, University of Calgary: "Through American Eyes: Questions and Themes Concerning Mid-19th-Century Upper Canadian Legal Institutions"

Wednesday February 10 - Jeremy Martin and Jim Phillips, University of Toronto: "Making Legal History: Manitoba Fisheries v. The Queen"

Wednesday February 17 - Reading Week

Wednesday February 24 - David Steeves, Independent Scholar: "The Daniel Sampson case and Jury Selection in the 1930s"

Wednesday March 10 - Paul Craven, York University: "Three Ships: Poverty, Paternalism and Politics at Mid-Century."

Wednesday March 24 - Robert Steinfeld, University of Buffalo: "The Early Anti-Majoritarian Rationale for American Judicial Review."

Wednesday April 14 - Frank Luce, Osgoode Hall Law School: "Labour Justice and 'rule by law': Brazil's Dictatorship, 1964-1985".

Wednesday April 21 - Carolyn Strange, Australian National University: TBA

 

Papers Presented in 2008-2009

Blake Brown , St Mary's University: "Disarming the Rogue and the Child: The Regulation of Revolvers in Late-Nineteenth-Century Canada"

Paul Craven, York University: "In the Woods: Low Law and Land Surveying in pre-Confederation Charlotte County"

Sean Donlan, University of Limerick: "The Boundaries of the State: Law in Ireland, 1687-1850" (co-authored with Michael Brown, University of Aberdeen)

Shelley Gavigan, Osgoode Hall Law School, " 'Make a Better Indian of Him:' Indian Policy and Criminal Law in the North-West Territories, 1876-1903."

Doug Harris, University of British Columbia, "Condominium: The Rise of Property in the City".

Doug Hay, Osgoode Hall Law School, "Law, War and Justice in Another Empire."

Rande Kostal, University of Western Ontario: "The Agony of Occupation: Karl Loewenstein and the American Occupation of Germany, 1945-47".

Brad Miller, University of Toronto: "A Carnival of Crime on Our Border: International Law, Imperial Power, and Fugitive Criminals in Canada, 1865-1883"

Jim Phillips and Brad Miller, University of Toronto, "Colonial Politics and the Judiciary in Nova Scotia's Age of Reform, 1830-1841"

Nick Rogers, York University, "Theatres of Justice in the London [Gordon] riots of 1780."

Mary Stokes, Osgoode Hall Law School: "The Rule of Men: Township Councils as Infant Tax Tribunals in Canada West/Ontario, 1850-1880"

Myra Tawfik, University of Windsor: "For the Encouragement of Learning: The Origins of Canadian Copyright Law"

Greg Taylor, Monash University, Melbourne, "How The Torrens System Got To Canada."

 

Papers Presented in 2007-2008

Constance Backhouse, University of Ottawa: "Rape in the House of Commons: The Prosecution of Louis Auger, M.P., 1929"

Ted Binnema, University of Northern British Columbia: " 'Framed to meet the views of the Indians': The Development of the Indian Act, 1868-1876"

Paul Craven, York University: "High Noon at Campo Bello: Prelude and Fugue"

Hamar Foster, University of Victoria: "We Want a Strong Promise: The Opposition to Indian Treaties in British Columbia, 1860-1990"

Doug Harris, University of British Columbia: "The Creation of Aboriginal Treaty Fishing Rights in Nineteenth-century British Columbia."

John McKerrow, McMaster University: "The Friendly Occupation of Australia? American Forces and Jurisdictional Conflicts in World War II"

Richard McMahon, University of Dundee, " 'Let the law take its course': Punishment and the prerogative of mercy in pre-Famine and Famine Ireland"

Radhika Mongia, York University: "Contract and Consent: Slavery, Indenture and the (Re)Making of Freedom"

Nick Rogers, York University: "The State, Outlaws, and 'History from Below': The Smugglers' War of the 1740's in Britain"

Joan Sangster, Trent University: "Women and Workplace Grievances in Post World War II Canada"

Mary Stokes, Osgoode Hall Law School, "Grand Juries and 'Proper Authorities': Low Law and Soft Law in Canada West/Ontario 1850-1880"

Jon Swainger, University of Northern British Columbia: " 'He May Be a Curse': Judicial Scandal and the Completion of Confederation, 1867-1878"

Shirley Tillotson, Dalhousie University: "The Culture of Contribution: Direct Taxation in Federal Finance, 1916-1926 "

Barry Wright, Carleton University: "Criminal Law Codification and Imperial Projects: The Self-Governing Jurisdiction Codes of the 1890s"