It is an authoritative and lively history of the Law Society of Upper Canada and of Ontario's lawyers, from the founding of the Society by ten lawyers in 1797, to the crises which shook the society and the legal profession in the mid-1990s.

Analyses aspects of the cultural history of the legal profession in England, Canada, Australia, France, Germany, Italy, Sweden, Switzerland, Norway and Finland. It examines ways in which lawyers were imaginatively and institutionally constructed, and their larger cultural significance.

This book examines lawyers' contributions to creating and maintaining the rule of law, one of the pillars of a liberal democracy. It moves from the European Enlightenment to the modern day, exploring the role of judges, government lawyers, and private practitioners in creating, defining, and being defined by, the demands of modern society. The book is divided into 4 parts representing the big themes. The first part considers lawyers' contribution to the growth of constitutionalism, the second, the formulation of roles and identities, and the third the formation of values. The fourth part focuses on the challenges faced by lawyers and the rule of law in the past 50 years, the neoliberal period, and how they challenge both conceptions of lawyers and the rule of law. Each part is illustrated by defining events, from the execution of Charles I, through the Nuremberg Trials, to the insurrection by supporters of Donald Trump in January 2021. Although the focus is on England and Wales, parallel developments in other jurisdictions, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the USA, are considered. This allows analysis of lawyers' historical and contemporary engagement with the rule of law in jurisdictional systems based on the Common Law. Each chapter is thematic, but the passage through the book is broadly chronological.

Approaching the legal profession through the lens of cultural history, Wes Pue explores the social roles lawyers imagined for themselves in England and its expanding empire from the late eighteenth to the mid-twentieth century. Each chapter focuses on a critical moment when lawyers – whether leaders or rebels – sought to reshape their profession. In the process, they often fancied they were also shaping the culture and politics of both nation and empire as they struggled to develop or adapt professional structures, represent clients, or engage in advocacy. As an exploration of the relationship between legal professionals and liberalism at home or in the Empire, this work draws attention to recurrent disagreements as to how lawyers have best assured their own economic well-being while simultaneously advancing the causes of liberty, cultural authority, stability, and continuity.

Using the judiciary of Manitoba as a model, Paths to the Bench examines the political nature of Canada's judicial appointment process and suggests that ability alone seldom determined who went to the bench. In fact, many of Manitoba's early judges spent little time actually practising law, since professional merit was not a criterion for judicial appointments. Rather, it was relationships with influential mentors and communities that ensured appointments and ultimately propelled careers. Brawn offers an in-depth analysis of how the paths to the bench of competent and connected and less competent and connected lawyers differed. This book is one of the few studies to examine why many of the best and brightest members of the bar either did not want to go to the bench, or if they did, why they did not get there.

In 1922, Elizabeth Bethune Campbell, a Toronto-born socialite, unearthed what she initially thought was an unsigned copy of her mother's will, designating her as the primary beneficiary of the estate. The discovery snowballed into a fourteen-year-battle with the Ontario legal establishment, as Mrs. Campbell attempted to prove that her uncle, a prominent member of Ontario's legal circle, had stolen funds from her mother's estate. In 1930, she argued her case before the Law Lords of the Privy Council in London. A non-lawyer and Canadian, with no formal education or legal training, Campbell was the first woman to ever appear before them. She won. Reprinted here in its entirety, Campbell's self-published account of her campaign, Where Angels Fear to Tread, is an eloquent first-person view of intrigue and overlapping spheres of influence in the early-twentieth-century legal system. Constance Backhouse and Nancy Backhouse provide extensive commentary and annotations to lluminate the context and pick up the narrative where Campbell's book leaves off. Vibrantly written, this is an enthralling read. Not only a fascinating social and legal history, it's also a very good story.

Christopher Moore's history of the Court of Appeal for Ontario traces the evolution of one of Canada's most influential courts from its origins to the post-Charter years.

“It’s a girl!” the Ontario press announced, as Canada’s first woman lawyer was called to the Ontario bar in February 1897. Quiet Rebels explores experiences of exclusion among the few women lawyers for the next six decades, and how their experiences continue to shape gender issues in the contemporary legal profession. Mary Jane Mossman tells the stories of all 187 Ontario women lawyers called to the bar from 1897 to 1957, revealing the legal profession’s gendered patterns. Comprising a small handful of students—or even a single student—at the Law School, women were often ignored, and they faced discrimination in obtaining articling positions and legal employment. Most were Protestant, white, and middle-class, and a minority of Jewish, Catholic, Black, and immigrant women lawyers faced even greater challenges. The book also explores some changes, as well as continuities, for the much larger numbers of Ontario women lawyers in recent decades. This longitudinal study of women lawyers’ gendered experiences in the profession during six decades of social, economic, and political change in early twentieth-century Ontario identifies factors that created—or foreclosed on—women lawyers’ professional success. The book’s final section explores how some current women lawyers, despite their increased numbers, must remain “quiet rebels” to succeed.

Crime and Punishment provides genealogists and social historians with context and tools to locate sources on criminal activity and its consequences during the Upper Canada period of Ontarios history through engravings, maps, charts, documents, and case studies.

The collected essays in this volume represent the highlights of legal historical scholarship in Canada today. All of the essays refer back in some form to Risk's own work in the field.