A collection of scholarly articles and personal reminiscences which examine the life and career of the late Bora Laskin, Former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada. It examines Laskin's contribution to legal education and scholarship; to jurisprudence in constitutional, administrative, labour, and private law; and to the Court itself.

A bestseller in Quebec that describes the horse-trading, intrigue and unrest behind Trudeau’s quest to repatriate the Constitution. After the referendum in 1980, Pierre Elliott Trudeau turned his sights on repatriating the Constitution in an effort to make Canada fully independent from Britain. What should have been a simple process snowballed into a complicated intrigue. Quebec, which thought its prerogatives would be threatened if the Constitution were repatriated, mounted a charm offensive, replete with fine dining and expensive wines in order to influence key British MPs. Not to be outdone, Canada’s native leaders, who felt betrayed by the British Crown, decided to enter the fray, determined to ensure that their cause would triumph. The English Labour Party had a view on the matter as well, which chiefly involved embarrassing Prime Minister Thatcher as thoroughly as possible. Historian Frédéric Bastien describes with great flair how the maverick Trudeau and the uncompromising Thatcher entered into one of history’s most unlikely marriages of convenience in order to repatriate the Canadian Constitution.

Since his call to the Bar in 1960, Martin L. Friedland has been involved in a number of important public policy issues, including bail, legal aid, gun control, securities regulation, access to the law, judicial independence and accountability, and national security. My Life in Crime and other Academic Adventures offers a first-hand account of the development of these areas of law from the perspective of a man who was heavily involved in their formation and implementation. It is also the story of a distinguished academic, author, and former dean of law at the University of Toronto. Moving beyond the boundaries of conventional memoir, Friedland offers an extended meditation on public policy issues and significant events in the field of law, discussing their historical impact and predicting the course of their future development. Given his personal experience, there is no other person more suited to discuss these hugely important issues. Friedland puts the law and legal institutions into a wider context, looking at the role of personalities, politics, and pressure groups in the establishment of laws that continue to have tremendous importance for Canadians. My Life in Crime and other Academic Adventures reflects upon a life devoted to education, scholarship, and the law, and is an insider account of public policy issues that have come to shape life in this country in the twentieth century and beyond.

In the history of twentieth-century Canadian law, Bora Laskin (1912-1984) is by all accounts one of its most important figures. Born in northern Ontario to Russian-Jewish immigrant parents, Laskin became a prominent human rights activist, university professor, and labour arbitrator before embarking on his 'accidental career' as a judge on the Ontario Court of Appeal, a member of the Supreme Court of Canada, and Chief Justice of Canada. Throughout his entire professional life, he used the law to make Canada a better place for workers, racial and ethnic minorities, and the disadvantaged. As a judge, he sought to make the judiciary more responsive to changing expectations in regard to justice and fundamental rights. In this biography, Philip Girard chronicles the life of a man who fought corporate capital, university boards, the Law Society of Upper Canada, and his own judicial colleagues in an effort to modernize institutions and reshape Canadian law. Girard draws on a wealth of previously untapped archival sources to provide, in vivid detail, a critical assessment of the contributions of a dynamic man on an important mission.

In any account of twentieth-century Canadian law, Bora Laskin (1912-1984) looms large. Born in northern Ontario to Russian-Jewish immigrant parents, Laskin became a prominent human rights activist, university professor, and labour arbitrator before embarking on his 'accidental career' as a judge on the Ontario Court of Appeal (1965) and later Chief Justice of Canada (1973-1984). Throughout his professional career, he used the law to make Canada a better place for workers, racial and ethnic minorities, and the disadvantaged. As a judge, he sought to make the judiciary more responsive to modern Canadian expectations of justice and fundamental rights. In Bora Laskin: Bringing Law to Life, Philip Girard chronicles the life of a man who, at all points of his life, was a fighter for a better Canada: he fought antisemitism, corporate capital, omnipotent university boards, the Law Society of Upper Canada, and his own judicial colleagues in an effort to modernize institutions and re-shape Canadian law. Girard exploits a wealth of previously untapped archival sources to provide, in vivid detail, a critical assessment of a restless man on an important mission.

Gerald Le Dain (1924–2007) was appointed to the Supreme Court of Canada in 1984. This collectively written biography traces fifty years of his steady, creative, and conciliatory involvement with military service, the legal academy, legislative reform, university administration, and judicial decision-making. This book assembles contributions from the in-house historian of the law firm where Le Dain first practised, from students and colleagues in the law schools where he taught, from a research associate in his Commission of Inquiry into the non-medical use of drugs, from two of his successors on the Federal Court of Appeal, and from three judicial clerks to Le Dain at the Supreme Court of Canada. Also reproduced here is a transcript of a recent CBC documentary about his 1988 forced resignation from the Supreme Court following a short-term depressive illness, with commentary from Le Dain’s family and co-workers. Gerald Le Dain was a tireless worker and a highly respected judge. In a series of essays that cover the different periods and dimensions of his career, Tracings of Gerald Le Dain’s Life in the Law is an important and compassionate account of one man's commitment to the law in Canada. Contributors include Harry W. Arthurs, G. Blaine Baker, Bonnie Brown, Rosemary Cairns-Way, John M. Evans, Melvyn Green, Bernard J. Hibbitts, Peter W. Hogg, Richard A. Janda, C. Ian Kyer, Andree Lajoie, Gerald E. Le Dain, Allen M. Linden, Roderick A. Macdonald, Louise Rolland, and Stephen A. Scott.