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.
MEMBERS’ BOOK 2020
Our members’ book for 2020 is Doodem and Council Fire: Anishinabe Governance through Alliance, by Heidi Bohaker, Associate Professor of History, University of Toronto and published by the University of Toronto Press. While Canada’s constitution protects Indigenous treaty rights, Canadians know much less about the legal traditions of Indigenous nations and the ways in which these different traditions informed treaties made between Indigenous peoples and the Crown. This volume is a ground-breaking exploration of one Indigenous legal tradition. In it, the author explains how a uniquely Anishinaabe category of kinship, the doodem, structured governance and law as practiced in formal councils (referred to metaphorically as fires) through the practice of alliance formation. Such alliances created relationships of interdependence, which were renewed through the exchange of gifts in council. The records of early Canadian treaties, Bohaker argues, are to be found in the records of gifts exchanged to create these alliances between council fires; the Anishinaabe treated the French, and later the British, as if their governments were council fires also. In return, colonial officials adhered to Indigenous law when they entered into treaties. Bohaker weaves together a voluminous amount of research from both Anishinaabe and European sources, including archival documents and material culture from institutions in Canada, Britain and France, to describe the continuities and changes in Anishinaabe governance and law until settler colonial law (the Indian Act) replaced traditional governance with elected band councils.
OPTIONAL EXTRA 2020
In 2020 we are also publishing The Death Penalty and Sex Murder in Canadian History, by Professor Carolyn Strange of the Australian National University in Canberra. This major study of the operation of the death penalty focusses on the disposition by executive review of all cases between Confederation and the abolition of the death penalty in which the offender not only committed murder but did so at the same time as he (or she) also committed a serious sexual offence. Professor Strange is able to show that such offenders fared much less well in the commutation process than other people convicted of murder and sentenced to death. As importantly, she divides the overall narrative into six periods, showing that within each period political, administrative and public consideration of the cases were conducted against a background of other concerns, ranging from the ‘danger’ of immigrants to the rise of psychiatric concern with such offenders to the abolition movement of the 1960s.
Canada - National
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Borderline Crime: Fugitive Criminals and the Challenge of the Border, 1819-1914
By Bradley Miller, Professor of History at the University of British Columbia, published by the University of Toronto Press. This is the first comprehensive history of cross-border Canadian-American interactions in relation to fugitive criminals, escaped slaves, and refugees. Miller examines the complexity of those interactions, which involved formal legal regimes governed by treaties as well… Read more »
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Security, Dissent and the Limits of Toleration in War and Peace: Canadian State Trials Volume IV, 1914-1939
Edited by Barry Wright, Department of Law, Carleton University, Eric Tucker, Osgoode Hall Law School, and Susan Binnie, Independent Historian, published by the University of Toronto Press. This latest collection in our State Trials series, the fourth, looks at the legal issues raised by the repression of dissent from the outset of World War One… Read more »
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Arming and Disarming: A History of Gun Control in Canada
R. Blake Brown, Professor of History, St Mary’s University. Published with the University of Toronto Press, 2012. $45.00; Student Price: $20.00. The topic of gun control is never far from the public eye in this country, taking centre stage whenever a dramatic shooting occurs and invariably featuring in debates about Canadian-American distinctions. This is the… Read more »
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Dewigged, Bothered and Bewildered: British Colonial Judges on Trial
by John Mclaren, Emeritus Professor of Law, University of Victoria. Published with University of Toronto Press, 2011. Canada was but one part of a large and complex empire, and this book is a reminder of that fact and a fascinating exploration of one important aspect of the legal history of the empire – the role of… Read more »
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Work on Trial: Canadian Labour Law Struggles
edited by Judy Fudge, Lansdowne Professor of Law, University of Victoria, and Eric Tucker, Professor of Law, Osgoode Hall Law School. Published with Irwin Law, 2010. The world of work, so important to individuals’ economic well-being and to their sense of self, has been fundamentally shaped by law, both collective bargaining law and individual employment law…. 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 Patricia McMahon, Osler, Hoskin & Harcourt LLP. 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 eligibility… Read more »
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Aggressive in Pursuit: The Life of Justice Emmett Hall
by Frederick Vaughan, formerly of the Political Science Department, University of Guelph. Published with the University of Toronto Press, 2004. In 1963 Prime Minister John Diefenbaker elevated Chief Justice Hall of Saskatchewan to the Supreme Court of Canada. This judicial biography focuses on Hall’s career as defence lawyer, and civil litigator, his position as a civil… 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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The Law Makers: Judicial Power and the Shaping of Canadian Federalism
by John T. Saywell, Emeritus Professor of History, York University. Published with University of Toronto Press, 2002. For those who believe that the history of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council’s decisions on the Canadian constitution is an oft-told story, this book will be a revelation indeed. One of Canada’s outstanding scholars, Professor Saywell draws… Read more »
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Labour Before The Law: The Regulation of Workers’ Collective Action In Canada, 1900-1948
by Judy Fudge, Landsdowne Professor of Law, University of Victoria and Eric Tucker, Professor, Osgoode Hall Law School, York University. Published with Oxford University Press, 2001. There is now a large volume of literature on Canadian labour history. In this literature, there has been no lack of attention paid to numerous issues involving the legal rights… Read more »