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Constance Backhouse, a prominent Canadian legal historian and scholar, delves into the role racism plays in the justice system in her latest book, Reckoning with Racism: Police, Judges, and the RDS Case. RDS was the case of Rodney Smalls, a Canadian teenager...
A broad definition of a political state trial is one that involves the political interests of the government. Legal Historian F. Murray Greenwood had the idea for a series of books, inspired by an English history of state trials, that would trace political state...
Medicine Hat, a small town on the South Saskatchewan River in southern Alberta, known for natural gas, coal, clay, and farmland garnered national attention during World War II for the murder of Nazi POWs while interned at a prisoner-of-war camp. Building on...
The term antisemitism almost immediately, and understandably, conjures up images of the Nazi state-sponsored persecution and murder of European Jews between 1933 and 1945. However, antisemitism is not only synonymous with the rise of the Nazi Party. The hatred of...
Crime fascinates the public. Whether it is watching television and the movies, or reading detective and crime novels, the criminal justice system enticed the public long before the dawn of the Internet. It could be argued that the fictionalized stories and...
In history, context is everything. While detailing isolated incidents may be of historical interest, a comparative analysis can bring the richer complexity of a period to life. John McLaren achieves this in his 2011 book on judicial discipline in the British...
February is Black History month in Canada. It is a time when, across the country, people, organizations, and institutions recognize and celebrate the achievements of African Canadians. Canada’s history is rife with stories of the many contributions that African...
Campbell, Lyndsay, Ted McCoy, and Mélanie Méthot, eds. Canada’s Legal Pasts: Looking Forward, Looking Back. Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 2020. In 1973, Professor of Law, R.C.B. Risk, presented “A Prospectus for Canadian Legal History” at Dalhousie Law...
McLachlin, Beverley. Truth Be Told: My Journey Through Life and the Law. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2019. Throughout her life, Beverley McLachlin has played many roles: daughter, sister, devoted mother and wife, student, lawyer, academic, judge and finally...
The fourth installment in what is arguably the most unique and compelling true crime series available today. From the perspective of a non-lawyer (as this author is), this book is compelling for two reasons. First, each chapter is written by a lawyer or...