Provincial Justice: Upper Canadian Legal Portraits from the Dictionary of Canadian Biography

Henri R. Pallard is a professor of law and justice at Laurentian
University.

For their 18th volume, the Osgoode Society has chosen to make an
exception to its original rule that it would publish only original
manuscripts in Canadian legal history. This is a reprint of 70
biographies that originally appeared in the Dictionary of Canadian
Biography. For reasons of space, the scope of the book is limited to
Upper Canada. Each biography is approximately five pages long, although
there are a few notable and substantial exceptions: Robert Baldwin, 31
pages; Sir John Beverley Robinson, 22 pages; William Dummer Powell, 18
pages; and William Warren Baldwin, 21 pages.

The book is divided into four sections, each devoted to a particular
theme. Section 1 reviews the lives of 24 legal officials (solicitors,
attorneys general, chief justices, and ordinary judges) who played an
important role in the development of the law in Upper Canada. Section 2
examines the careers of 15 lawyers vis-а-vis their influence on law,
politics, business, and society. The lives of 19 accused and the legal
issues that arose from their trials make up Section 3, while the final
section addresses important issues concerning the legal system and
examines the role that various people played in the debate.

The editor has defined the theme of the book as “the charge of
partiality levelled against the administration of justice,” a focal
point in the development of Canadian law. While many of the biographies
deal with this issue, several do not and some do so only incidentally;
such are the hazards associated with imposing a context on essays that
were previously written and meant to stand alone. Another weakness is
the book’s failure to convey how the various people it presents
interacted with each other, and, consequently, how Canadian legal
history truly developed during this time.

Yet this book must be seen as a welcome addition to the growing body of
literature on Canadian legal history. It is hoped that these initial
sparse biographies will encourage students to delve more deeply
into—and to make new contributions to—this rapidly developing area
of scholarly interest.