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Brian Dickson: A Judge’s Journey
2003 by Robert Sharpe, Justice of the Court of Appeal for Ontario and Professor Kent Roach, Faculty of Law, University of Toronto.
Published with the University of Toronto Press, 2003.
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.
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Contents
FOREWORD vii
PREFACE ix
Part One: Introduction
1 A Judge’s Journey 3
Part Two: Life before the Bench, 1916-1963
2 Prairie Upbringing 29
3 Off to War 48
4 Law and Business; Family and Community 65
Part Three: A Judge in Manitoba, 1963-1973
5 Queen’s Bench 91
6 Court of Appeal 110
Part Four: The Supreme Court, 1973-1984
7 Starting Slowly 135
8 Gaining Ground 158
9 Compassion and Equity 179
10 Write and Rewrite 202
11 Fault and Free Will 218
12 Balanced Federalism 240
13 Patriation of the Constitution 263
Part Five: Chief Justice and the Charter, 1984-1990
14 Chief Justice 285
15 Building the Foundations 309
16 Continuity and Change 337
17 Cracks in the Foundations 350
18 Feeling the Strain 377
19 Equality Rights 397
20 Language Rights and National Unity 412
21 The Honour of the Crown 442
Part Six: Retirement, 1990-1998
22 Dickson of Canada 465
NOTES 483
ILLUSTRATION CREDITS 553
INDEX 555
Awards
- Winner - John Wesley Dafoe Book Prize for distinguished writing on Canada and/or Canada's place in the world (2003)
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, 3 January 2004, p. D8.
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, p. 362.
R.W. Kostal, McGill Law Review, Vol 51, 2006, p. 199.
Jamie Cameron, University of Law Journal, Vol 55, 2005, p. 93.
Ellen Anderson, University of Toronto Quarterly, Vol 74, Winter 2004/2005, p. 575.
Richard W. Pound, Policy Options, Vol 26, 2004-2005, p. 76.
Chris Axworthy, Great Plains Quarterly, Vol 24, 2004, p. 296.
