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.

All Books

  • Provincial Justice: Upper Canadian Legal Portraits

    edited by Dr. Robert Fraser. Published with the University of Toronto Press, 1992. This is an important reference guide and a highly entertaining book. In association with the Dictionary of Canadian Biography, which has published twelve monumental volumes dealing with Canadian lives from the year 1000 to 1900, we have selected some sixty biographies of Upper… 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 IV: Beyond the Law: Lawyers and Business in Canada, 1830-1930

    Edited by Carol Wilton.  Published with Butterworths Canada, 1990. Beyond the Law has been called “the first full-length collection offering a serious scholarly treatment of the role of the legal profession in any aspect of Canadian history”. These essays explore new ground in tracing the increasingly complex involvement of lawyers in Canadian business during a… 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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  • The Odyssey of John Anderson

    Patrick Brode, Legal Counsel, City of Windsor. Published with the University of Toronto Press, 1989. Just before the outbreak of the American Civil War, a sensational case was heard in Toronto which captured headlines throughout North America and Europe. John Anderson, a fugitive slave who had been living quietly near Brantford, Ontario, was accused of having… Read more »

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  • The Genesis of The Canadian Criminal Code of 1892

    by Desmond Brown. Published with the University of Toronto Press, 1989. In 1892 the Canadian Parliament enacted the Criminal Code. Drafted in just over a year by a justice department consisting of fourteen men occupying six offices, it was the first such code to be enforced in a self-governing jurisdiction in the British empire. As such,… Read more »

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  • Middleton: The Beloved Judge

    by John D. Arnup. Published with McClelland & Stewart, 1988. William Edward Middleton served as Justice of the Supreme Court of Ontario for thirty-three years. His written judgments, many still cited today, are models of insight and wisdom. In addition to his contribution to jurisprudence, Middleton, at a time when a number of Supreme Court Justices… Read more »

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  • The Last Day, the Last Hour: The Currie Libel Trial

    Robert J. Sharpe. Published with Carswell, 1988. “Out of Print. Second edition published in 2009. Books about trials readily capture the attention of a public interested in the drama of courtroom confrontation, and they offer an opportunity to present often complex legal issues in an appealing and readable format. In their reconstruction of past legal and… Read more »

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  • The Fiercest Debate: Cecil A. Wright, The Benchers And Legal Education In Ontario, 1923-1957.

    by C. Ian Kyer And Jerome Bickenbach. Published with the University of Toronto Press, 1987. Disagreements over legal education have by no means been restricted to Ontario or to the twentieth century. The nature of legal education was debated in many parts of Europe and North America in the course of the nineteenth century. As the… Read more »

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  • Mr. Attorney: The Attorney General for Ontario in Court, Cabinet and Legislature, 1791-1899

    by Paul Romney. Published with the University of Toronto Press, 1986. Mr. Attorney is a major exercise in revisionist historiography. Based on extensive research in often obscure sources, it offers an account of the office of Attorney General which reinterprets several key themes of nineteenth-century constitutional and political history. Paul Romney argues that grievances involving the… Read more »

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