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Institutions And Linguistic Conventions: The Pragmatism Of Lieber's Legal Hermeneutics, Guyora Binder

Journal Articles

This article presents Francis Lieber’s 1839 treatise “Legal and Political Hermeneutics” as a surprisingly modern and pragmatic account of interpretation. It first explicates the two most important influences on Liber’s thought, the romantic philology of Friedrich Schleiermacher, and the institutional positivism of Whig jurists Story and Kent. It shows that both of these sources frankly acknowledged that interpretation is an institutional practice, organized by the evolving aims and customs of the institutions within which it took place. Both tended to view the writing and reading of texts as the deployment of linguistic conventions. Both movements thereby viewed meaning for all …

That The Laws Shall Bind Equally On All: Congressional And Executive Roles In Applying Laws To Congress, Harold H. Bruff

Publications

No abstract provided.

A Great Loneliness Of Spirit, Charles F. Wilkinson

Publications

No abstract provided.

The Evolution Of American Probate Courts And Emerging Standards To Guide Their Progress, Thomas L. Hafemeister, Paula Hannaford-Agor

Faculty Publications

Courts with probate jurisdiction are an excellent example of the evolu­tion of American courts. Despite the fact that they are direct descendants of the English judicial system, the structure, jurisdiction, and procedures of the probate courts assumed a uniquely American flavor soon after their initial establishment in the colonies. From the beginning, American probate courts have shown considerable diversity from state to state. State courts exercising probate jurisdiction have continued to evolve over time in response to the various demands placed upon them. This article describes the historical evolution of American courts exer­cising jurisdiction over probate matters, with specific attention …

The Supreme Court Of Nova Scotia, Responsible Government, And The Quest For Legitimacy, 1850-1920, Philip Girard

Dalhousie Law Journal

Wallace Graham was one of the ablest judges ever to sit on the Supreme Court of Nova Scotia. Born of humble Baptist parentage in Antigonish in 1848, the yearNova Scotia's firstReform government took office, he was truly one of the sons of responsible government: that group of non-61ite, non-Halifax, non-Anglican men who left their stamp on the province's political order after mid-century. Appointed to the bench in 1889, he sat for twenty-six years as puisne judge and judge in equity before being named chief justice in 1915. Sadly, he occupied the post for only two years, dying suddenly in office …

Sedition In Nova Scotia: R. V. Wilkie (1820) And The Incontestable Illegality Of Seditious Libel Before R. V. Howe (1835), Barry Cahill

Dalhousie Law Journal

Given its primacy and exceptionality in the Nova Scotian context, Wilkie both exemplifies the judiciary's role in official repression, and instantiates the importance of what Wright calls "the ideological mechanisms of the criminal law" in prescribing the outer limits of legitimate political discourse. This paper examines the first known use by the government of Nova Scotia of the eighteenth-century, judicially-invented misdemeanour of seditious libel in order to silence and punish criticism of the ruling eite. As Nova Scotia had neither indigenous caselaw, nor statutory legislation to supplement and reinforce the common law offence-Upper Canada's SeditionAct (1804) was still in full …

The Admiralty Court In Colonial Nova Scotia, Arthur J. Stone

Dalhousie Law Journal

The establishment of the "Admiralty Court", which was formally known as the Nova Scotia Court of Vice-Admiralty, had preceded Cornwallis's arrival by several years. In the late summer of 1720, when Richard Philipps was both Governor and Vice-Admiral at Nova Scotia's old royal capital of Annapolis, Daniel Henry was appointed as Judge, Arthur Savage as Register and Cypryan Southack as Marshal in vice-admiralty. Less than a decade later, during the winter of 1729, the principal offices of a court of vice-admiralty went to John Bradstreet as Judge, Erasmus James Philipps as Advocate General, James Gibson as Register and Archibald Rennie …

Mr. Justice Roland Ritchie: A Biography, Thomas Stinson

Dalhousie Law Journal

Mr. Justice Roland Almon Ritchie (1910-1988) was the most recent Nova Scotian to have been on the bench of the Supreme Court of Canada, serving for a quarter-century (1959-1984). Judicial biographies in this country are rare enough that any addition to the literature can be justified but Ritchie is an especially intriguing choice. He served on the bench for a long period, there is a wealth of information regarding his formative years courtesy of the published diaries of his older brother, Charles, and he is regarded as the embodiment of conservatism in a court that has frequently been described as …

The Search For Resolution Of The Canada-France Ocean Dispute Adjacent To St. Pierre And Miquelon, Ted L. Mcdorman

Dalhousie Law Journal

They were not to become an "object of jealously" according to the British and French in 1783. True to this admonition, the French islands of St. Pierre and Miquelon have remained as the uncontested footnotes to France's colonial presence in North America. However, the ocean area and resources adjacent to the French islands became the object of intense jealously, being the centre of a thorny, 25 year international dispute between Canada and France.

Book Review, Norman Doe, Fundamental Authority In Late Medieval English Law (1990), David K. Millon

Scholarly Articles

None available.

The Native Hawaiian People And International Human Rights Law: Toward A Remedy For Past And Continuing Wrongs, S. James Anaya

Publications

No abstract provided.

English Legal History In The Age Of Mansfield: Three Perspectives: Introduction, Michael Grossberg

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Ideology And The Emergence Of Legal Aid In Saskatchewan, Jennie Abell

Dalhousie Law Journal

My work at Saskatchewan legal aid (from 1978 to 1982) generated questions for me about law and social change, and about the origins of legal aid in the context of the expansion of the welfare state. I examined the history of legal aid under the N.D.P. in Saskatchewan from 1974-1982 in an earlier work.' I concluded that the Saskatchewan N.D.P did not significantly differ from other provincial parties in its handling of legal aid during that period, and in that sense that legal aid as it was elaborated under a social democratic government was not fundamentally altered.

South Carolina's Largest Slave Auctioneering Firm, Thomas D. Russell

Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship

This article presents the original finding that South Carolina's legal system conducted a majority of the state's slave auctions during the antebellum years.Courts conducted slave auctions in several circumstances. Sheriffs sold the property of debtors; and courts also conducted or supervised sales in order to divide estates. Drawing upon extensive empirical analysis of primary sources in various South Carolina archives, this article compares the total number of slaves sold at court-ordered or court-supervised sales with the best empirical estimates for private slave sales - whether at auction or not. The conclusion is that the courts acted as the state's greatest …

The Repeal Of Article 8: Law, Government, And Cultural Politics At Akwesasne, William A. Starna

American Indian Law Review

No abstract provided.

Book Review: Mapping Legal History’S Middle Ground, Richard B. Bernstein

Articles & Chapters

No abstract provided.

The First Americans And The "Free" Exercise Of Religion, Martin C. Loesch

American Indian Law Review

No abstract provided.

Discrimination, The Right To Seek Redress And The Common Law: A Century-Old Debate, Béatrice Vizkelety

Dalhousie Law Journal

Does discrimination law have anything in common with the common law? This question, which may have been reworded from time to time in deference to the age in which it was raised, is one which has recurred with remarkable tenacity throughout most of this century. It is also a question which continues, despite initial impressions, to be relevant to the manner in which adjudicatots interpret and apply anti-discrimination legislation today.

The "Colored Barrister": The Short Life And Tragic Death Of James Robinson Johnston, 1876-1915, Barry Cahill

Dalhousie Law Journal

The mortal remains of James Robinson Johnston, Nova Scotia's first Black lawyer, lie buried in the family plot at Camp Hill Cemetery in Halifax. The gravestone epigraphy records that he was a Good Templar, a Freemason and an Oddfellow; his Dalhousie University degrees (one of them inaccurately); and the fact that he died a mere nine days short of his thirty-ninth birthday. "Gone but not forgotten" reads the epitaph, much less ironically now - in view of the fact that the recently established Chair in Black Canadian Studies at his alma mater has been named in Johnston's honour-than it ever …

The Constitution And Immigration: The Impact Of The Proposed Changes To The Immigration Power Under The Constitution Act, 1867, Davies Bagambiire

Dalhousie Law Journal

This article examines the impact that the suggested changes would have on the immigration power as presently set forth in sections 95 and 91(25) of the Constitution Act, 1867, and on Canadian immigration policy generally. First, it discusses how the present immigration power is allocated as between the federal government and the provinces, how it has been exercised or attempted to be exercisedby the two levels of government and how it has evolved and been interpreted by the Courts. Secondly, it looks at the problems that could arise as a result of the federal government transferring some of its immigration …

The Fourteenth Amendment: Original Intent And Modern Possibility, Donald E. Lively

St. Thomas Law Review

This essay is derived in part from the author's book THE CONSTITUTION AND RACE (1992). Copyright 1992 by Donald E. Lively.

Progress Is Our Only Product: Legal Reform And The Codification Of Evidence, Michael S. Ariens

Faculty Articles

Twentieth century reform of the American law of evidence was initially premised on the ideals of legal progressivism, ideals splintered by American legal realism. In preparing the American Law Institute's Model Code of Evidence from 1939 to 1942, Harvard Law School professor Edmund M. Morgan attempted to reconstitute the framework of reform in light of the challenge of legal realism. The Model Code was based on granting greater discretion to the trial judge and changing the goals of the trial from a search for truth to a "rational" resolution of disputes.

Morgan’s decision to emphasize the rational resolution of disputes …

The Legal Basis Of Aboriginal Title, Brian Slattery

Articles & Book Chapters

This paper considers a range of differing approaches to the question of Aboriginal land rights in the light of the judgment of the B.C. Supreme Court in the Delgamuukw case.

One Hundred Years Of Harmful Error: The Historical Jurisprudence Of Medical Malpractice, Theodore Silver

Scholarly Works

In this Article, Professor Silver examines the origins of present-day malpractice law. He begins by noting that negligence and medical malpractice as the common law now knows them made their debut in the nineteenth century although their roots lie deep in the turf of trespass and assumpsit. He argues, however, that toward the turn of the century several episodes of linguistic laziness purported to produce a separation between negligence and medical malpractice so that the two fields are conventionally thought to rest on separate doctrinal foundations. According to Professor Silver, historically based scrutiny of medical malpractice and its ties to …

Book Review. The Magic Mirror: Law In American History By Kermit L. Hall, Michael Grossberg

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

The Origin And Evolution Of The Attorney And Solicitor In The Legal Profession Of Nova Scotia, Barry Cahill

Dalhousie Law Journal

D.G. Bell has observed that the torrent "of historical writing on Canadian legal education has yet to be matched by intensive study of the legal profession itself." The aim of the present paper is to demonstrate that, for eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Nova Scotia, the development of the legal profession was so closely linked to the evolution of the superior courts, especially the Court of Chancery, that the former cannot be studied in isolation from the latter. By the time Halifax was founded in 1749, the attorney at law and solicitor in equity had not only been statutorily entrenched as …

An Essay On Institutional Responsibility: The Indigenous Blacks And Micmac Programme At Dalhousie Law School, Richard F. Devlin, A Wayne Mackay

Dalhousie Law Journal

Dalhousie Law School, like most other law schools, as a tribute to its graduates and as a manifestation of its traditions, adorns its walls with class photographs of years gone by. However, if one were to stop and scrutinize more carefully these pictures one might want to reconsider the tradition in a more circumspect light. Perhaps one might notice that until the nineteen sixties women were few and far between and that even now they still make up less than half of most graduating classes. More conspicuous still, is the general absence of First Nations peoples from the celebratory pageant. …

Labour Relations In The Academy: A Case Study At The University Of Saskatchewan, Peter Mackinnon

Dalhousie Law Journal

In the wake of a protracted period of faculty unrest at the University of Saskatchewan, two decisions of the province's Labour Relations Board, and an award of a sole arbitrator will have more enduring significance than the dispute that engendered them. In this paper I propose to consider this trilogy and comment on its importance in an assessment of labour relations in an academic setting.

Faultless Reasoning: Reconstructing The Foundations Of Civil Responsibility In Quebec Since Codification, David Howes

Dalhousie Law Journal

In The Civil Law System of the Province of Quebec, Jean-Gabriel Castel writes, To know the Quebec law of contract, it is sufficient to read the articles of the Civil Code dealing with this topic and the cases decided since its enactment. If in the common-law system it is absolutely necessary to know history to understand, for instance, the essential division between law and equity ... this is not the case in France or in Quebec. There, the civil law is logically organized, it is not the product of a historical evolution or of a long line of decided cases. …

The Faculty Of Law, University Of British Columbia 1981-90, Joost Blom

Dalhousie Law Journal

It may be uninspiring to begin a sketch of the UBC Law Faculty since 1981 by talking about money, but the Faculty's financial circumstances during this period are the key to much of what follows. For about five years from 1982, the provincial government's fiscal watchword was "restraint", which so far as the universities were concerned meant, in the early years, actually cutting operating grants and, later on, keeping a fairly tight lid on them. UBC's budget fell in absolute terms for three successive years, and continued to slip in real terms for another year or two. The Law Faculty …