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Articles 1 - 15 of 15

Full-Text Articles in Law

Lawyers' Empire And The Great Transformation, Douglas C. Harris Jan 2016

Lawyers' Empire And The Great Transformation, Douglas C. Harris

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Writing through the years of World War II and attempting to understand its horrors, the carnage of World War I, the great depression, and the rise of communist and fascist regimes, Karl Polanyi posited that Western Europe had undergone The Great Transformation through the nineteenth century. Built around policies of economic liberalism and the gospel of the self-regulating market, this transformation had produced a century of unparalleled peace and material wealth in Europe, but the unmooring of the market from other social forces, and the remaking of land and labour as commodities, would unleash, when the buttressing pillars faltered, the …

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The Psychology Of Good Character, Alice Woolley, Jocelyn Stacey Jan 2010

The Psychology Of Good Character, Alice Woolley, Jocelyn Stacey

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This paper explores the significance of the changing nature of the good character requirement for law society admission in Canada. It posits that good character has shifted from a philosophical concept into a psychological concept, with evidence of past bad acts claimed to be relevant for whether an applicant represents a future risk to the public. This shifting conception of character has, however, been only partial, and the decision-making processes of Canadian law societies have not kept pace with it. Instead, the decision-making process defines character generally and generically, with only occasional emphasis on character as a relevant predictor of …

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Cowboy Jurists & The Making Of Legal Professionalism, W. Wesley Pue Jan 2009

Cowboy Jurists & The Making Of Legal Professionalism, W. Wesley Pue

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This paper identifies the origins of modern Canadian legal professionalism in the prairie west during the early twentieth century, arguing for the importance of human agency and emphasizing contingency where others assert trans-historical processes. Lawyers combined agendas which were explicitly moral and reforming with a profound restructuring of their profession. Their efforts to reform the curriculum of formal legal education was part of a cultural project, but so too was their desire to attain self-regulation, monopoly, professional independence, and plenary disciplinary powers. The substantive findings documented here direct our attention to questions of cultural agency and structural revolution that are …

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Book Review: Martin Chanock, The Making Of South African Legal Culture, 1902-1936: Fear, Favour And Prejudice, W. Wesley Pue Jan 2009

Book Review: Martin Chanock, The Making Of South African Legal Culture, 1902-1936: Fear, Favour And Prejudice, W. Wesley Pue

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This review of Martin Chanock's work on South African legal culture, locates the work in the context of international scholarship on law and society, legal history, and law and colonialism. It appeared in 18:1 Canadian Journal of Law & Society, 177-181.

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Banned From Lawyering: Gordon Martin, Communist, W. Wesley Pue Jan 2009

Banned From Lawyering: Gordon Martin, Communist, W. Wesley Pue

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This paper assesses the exclusion of Gordon Martin from the practice of law in 1948 solely on the grounds that his communist political commitment was inconsistent with the role of a lawyer. In so doing it canvasses understandings of the day regarding communism, constitutionalism, and American social thought (as embodied in Oliver Wendell Holmes, John Dewey, Charles Beard, James Harvey Robinson, and Thorstein Veblen). Issues relating to self-governance of the legal profession, character, and statutory interpretation under then-current administrative law doctrine are reviewed.

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Introduction To Lawyers In Canadian History, W. Wesley Pue Jan 2009

Introduction To Lawyers In Canadian History, W. Wesley Pue

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This paper "frames" the study of lawyers in Canadian history against major interpretations of the legal profession and legal professionalism including the historical self-understandings of organized legal professions in the common law world, market-control theorists, institutional, and cultural history approaches. The article serves as the introduction to a new book on The Promise And Perils Of Law: Lawyers In Canadian History, which includes essays on the history of legal education, the practice of law, Quebec's legal distinctiveness, constitutionalism and the rule of law, and issues in race, gender, and diversity.

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Lawyers' Professionalism, Colonialism, State Formation And National Life In Nigeria, 1900-1960: 'The Fighting Brigade Of The People', Chidi Oguamanam, W. Wesley Pue Jan 2006

Lawyers' Professionalism, Colonialism, State Formation And National Life In Nigeria, 1900-1960: 'The Fighting Brigade Of The People', Chidi Oguamanam, W. Wesley Pue

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This essay explores the role of the organized legal profession in relation to British Imperialism, state formation, and independence in Nigeria. Drawing on recent works in the fields of post-colonial legal studies and cultural histories of legal professions, the paper develops an understanding of lawyering and lawyers' associations as deeply implicated in the myriad cultural projects through which law simultaneously 'civilizes' provincials and mediates between centre and locale. The paper reviews new developments in theories of legal professionalism and surveys secondary literatures of lawyers in colonial processes. It assesses the historical processes linking imperialism, law, and lawyers from the establishment …

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Educating The Total Jurist?, W. Wesley Pue Jan 2006

Educating The Total Jurist?, W. Wesley Pue

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This paper discusses a discontinuity between the ways in which legal education has historically sought to reconstruct the soul of lawyers-in-training and the contemporary conceit that legal education can be value-free. It identifies a gap between early 21st century narrowly technocratic approaches to legal professionalism - epitomized by Enron professionalism and earlier conceptions of lawyering. A desire to instill a moral sensibility in apprentice lawyers weighed heavily in an earlier generation's thinking about legal education everywhere in the common law world, giving rise to the programmes, schemes, and imaginings that provided templates for contemporary university legal training. With surprising consistency, …

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Death Squads Or 'Directions Over Lunch': A Comparative Review Of The Independence Of The Bar, W. Wesley Pue Jan 2006

Death Squads Or 'Directions Over Lunch': A Comparative Review Of The Independence Of The Bar, W. Wesley Pue

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Periodic crises around the conduct of lawyers provoke moves in the direction of constituting the organized legal profession as a regulated industry, much like any other. Such proposals, whether for regulation through Legal Services Commissions or other structures, abruptly confront the historically embedded constitutional notion that liberty itself rests on the independence of the bar. This paper engages in a comparative review of the notion of an independent legal profession. Its particular focus is on widely agreed international standards and on the experience of Commonwealth countries and especially Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom. The paper draws on literatures from …

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Cultural Projects And Structural Transformation In The Legal Profession, W. Wesley Pue Jan 2003

Cultural Projects And Structural Transformation In The Legal Profession, W. Wesley Pue

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This paper explores the history of professional formation amongst lawyers, pointing to the surprising conclusions that contemporary legal professionalism bears little continuity with supposed roots in British professionalism and that one of the major motors driving professionalism was related to a project of cultural transformation in state and society at large. Whilst legal professions appear exclusionary and xenophobic from an outside perspective, the desire to control difference has deeper, more fully cultural roots, than arguments from self-interest per se might suggest.

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Globalization And Legal Education: Views From The Outside-In, W. Wesley Pue Jan 2001

Globalization And Legal Education: Views From The Outside-In, W. Wesley Pue

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During the past two decades a new, global, legal professionalism has manifested itself in the field of legal education through a variety of programmes seeking to produce globally-aware or globally-connected lawyers. This paper explores the diverse meanings of globalization and legal education with particular attention to the differential effects of globalization and the varied experiences of it in different parts of the world. Taking its starting point from a Nigerian graduate student's insight that globalization means 'The White Man is Coming again'. What does he want this time?, he explores both American and international perspectives.

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Back To Basics? University Legal Education And 21st Century Professionalism, Annie Rochette, W. Wesley Pue Jan 2001

Back To Basics? University Legal Education And 21st Century Professionalism, Annie Rochette, W. Wesley Pue

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This article probes the complexities surrounding trying to match law school curriculum with the needs of students intent on careers in the practice of law. It pursues the issue in three stages: 1) an assessment of a contemporary back to basics critique of legal education; 2)an empirical evaluation of actual student experiences and course selections at a major North American law school over the course of a decade; 3) an assessment of the 'fit' between existing legal education and the likely needs of future practitioners.

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A History Of British Columbia Legal Education, W. Wesley Pue Jan 2000

A History Of British Columbia Legal Education, W. Wesley Pue

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This paper explores the history of legal education in twentieth century British Columbia. The period covers the transition from qualification by apprenticeship to the foundation of Canada's first post-WWII Faculty of Law - the beginning of modern legal education in Canada. Issues addressed include the moral vision of legal education, gender and the legal profession (the admission of women lawyers), race-based exclusions, the question of whether communists could be qualified as lawyers, and the evolution of legal curriculum from the age of moral reform to the era of narrowly technocratic notions of legal knowledge.

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British Masculinities, Canadian Lawyers, W. Wesley Pue Jan 1999

British Masculinities, Canadian Lawyers, W. Wesley Pue

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This paper explores the construction of early twentieth century Canadian legal professionalism as the workings-out of Britishness understood through the lenses of cultural history, cultures of imperialism, and gender relations. It provides a case study in the histories of professionalism in a settler colony.

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Book Review Of A Radical Lawyer In Victorian England: W. P. Roberts And The Struggle For Workers' Rights By Raymond Challinor, W. Wesley Pue Jan 1991

Book Review Of A Radical Lawyer In Victorian England: W. P. Roberts And The Struggle For Workers' Rights By Raymond Challinor, W. Wesley Pue

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This essay assesses the history of one of Britain's most important lawyers for the working class through a critical review of Raymond Challinor's ground-breaking work. The life of W. P. Roberts spanned crucial decades of the nineteenth Century. Admitted to the lower branch of the legal profession in Bath in 1827 W. P. Roberts converted from Toryism in the first decade of his professional life to emerge as a leading figure in the Bath Working Men's Association by 1837. Apparently motivated by a deeply-held Christian belief in an essential human dignity, Roberts' consistently employed the law as a shield in …

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