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Fatal Confession: A Girl’s Murder, a Man’s Execution, and the Fitton Case
Carolyn Strange, Fatal Confession: A Girl’s Murder, a Man’s Execution, and the Fitton Case. Published by the University of British Columbia Press. Carolyn Strange is Professor of History at the Australian National University. In the mid-1950s most Canadians still believed that murder merited the death penalty. It was also a time when modern approaches to… Read more »
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I Did Not Commit Adultery: Marital Conflict and the Law in Ontario in the 1870s
Jim Phillips, I Did Not Commit Adultery: Marital Conflict and the Law in Ontario in the 1870s, published by the University of Toronto Press. Jim Phillips is a Professor in the Faculty of Law at the University of Toronto, cross-appointed to the Department of History and the Centre for Criminology and Socio-Legal Studies. He is… Read more »
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Essays in the History of Canadian Law Volume XII: New Essays in Women’s History
Our members’ book for 2023 is Lori Chambers and Joan Sangster, eds., Essays in the History of Canadian Law Volume XII: New Essays in Women’s History, published by the University of Toronto Press. Lori Chambers is Professor of History and Women’s Studies at Lakehead University, and Joan Sangster is Professor Emerita of History at Trent University. This… 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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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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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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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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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 »