Osgoode Society Books

Our books are listed here chronologically by date of publication. Use the Search function to the right to find a particular book, or author.

Women

  • The Persons Case: The Origins and Legacy of the Fight for Legal Personhood

    by Mr. Justice Robert Sharpe of the Court of Appeal for Ontario and Prof. Patricia McMahon, Osgoode Hall Law School. Published with the University of Toronto Press, 2007. The Persons’ Case is one of the best known Canadian constitutional cases, both for the fact that it declared women to be ‘persons’ for the purposes of… Read more »

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  • Misconceptions: Unmarried Motherhood and the Ontario Children of Unmarried Parents Act, 1921-1969

    by Lori Chambers, Professor, Department of History and Women’s Studies, Lakehead University. Published with the University of Toronto Press, 2007. This book is a study of the operation of the Children of Unmarried Parents Act, in the courts and, principally, through the agency responsible for administering the Act, the Childrens’ Aid Society. It explores the experiences… Read more »

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  • Courted And Abandoned: Seduction In Canadian Law

    by Patrick Brode, Legal Counsel, City of Windsor. Published with the University of Toronto Press, 2002. A pregnancy outside of marriage was a traumatic event in frontier Canada, one that had profound legal implications, not only for the mother, but also for the woman’s family, the alleged father, and for the entire community. Patrick Brode examines… Read more »

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  • Uncertain Justice: Canadian Women and Capital Punishment 1754-1953

    by F. Murray Greenwood, Emeritus Professor of History, University of British Columbia and Beverley Boissery, Independant Scholar. Published with Dundurn Press, 2000. In recent years, scholars in all disciplines, feminists and traditionalists, have increasingly recognized how significant issues of gender are in understanding most aspects of the human condition. Indeed gender as a category of analysis… Read more »

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  • Married Women and Property Law in Victorian Ontario

    by Lori Chambers, Professor, Department of History and Women’s Studies, Lakehead University. Published with the University of Toronto Press, 1997. Married Women and Property Law in Victorian Ontario, by Professor Lori Chambers, Lakehead University, is a fascinating account of gender relationships in nineteenth-century Ontario as revealed through a series of laws which reflected Victorian attitudes to… Read more »

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  • The Politics of Codification: The Lower Canadian Civil Code of 1866

    by Brian Young, Professor Emeritus, Department of History and Classical Studies, McGill University. Published with McGill Queen’s University Press, 1994. Brian Young interprets codification as part of a larger process that included the collapse of the Lower Canadian rebellions, the decline of seigneurialism, the expansion of bourgeois democracy in central Canada, professionalization of the bar, and… Read more »

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  • Petticoats and Prejudice: Women and Law in Nineteenth-Century Canada

    by Constance Backhouse, Professor of Law, University of Ottawa. Published with Womens Press, 1991. This is the first comprehensive work in the field of Canadian women’s legal history. Author Constance Backhouse, an internationally-recognized authority on Canadian women’s legal history, has compiled here the most important of her decade’s worth of research. This highly-readable book highlights the… Read more »

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  • Essays in the History of Canadian Law, Volume III: Nova Scotia

    edited by Jim Phillips, Professor, Faculty of Law, University of Toronto, and Philip Girard, Professor, Osgoode Hall Law School. Published with the University of Toronto Press, 1990. An introduction by the editors is followed by ten essays grouped into four main areas of study. The first is the legal system as a whole: essays in this section discuss… Read more »

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