Drawing on engaging case studies, Essays in the History of Canadian Law brings the law to life. The contributors to this collection provide rich historical and social context for each case, unravelling the process of legal decision-making and explaining the impact of the law on the people involved in legal disputes. Examining the law not simply as legislation and institutions, but as discourse, practice, symbols, rhetoric, and language, the book’s chapters show the law as both oppressive and constraining and as a point of contention and means of resistance.

This collection presents new approaches and concerns, as well as re-examinations of existing themes with new evidence and modes of storytelling. Contributors cover many legal thematic areas, from criminal to labour, civil, administrative, and human rights law, spanning English and French Canada, and ranging from the mid-eighteenth century to the late twentieth century. The legal cases vary from precedent-setting cases to lesser-known ones, from those driven by one woman’s quest for personal justice to others in which state actors dominate. Bringing to light how the people embroiled in these cases interacted with the legal system, the book reveals the ramifications of a legal system characterized by multiple layers of inequality.

This collection investigates historical cases involving women and gender relations in order to uncover the power dynamics at the heart of the legal system.

Introduction
Joan Sangster and Lori Chambers

1. The Trials of Caroline Ferguson: Reputation and Litigation in Quebec, 1852–1857
Eric Reiter

2. A Cause Célèbre: Marriage, Quebec Law, and the Delpit Affair of 1901
Mélanie Méthot

3. The Trials and Travails of Eliza Maria Campbell
Jim Phillips

4. Meunier v. Macdonald and Secord, 1911: A Métis Woman Takes on Prominent Edmonton Settler Businessmen, Politicians, and Land Speculators
Sarah Carter

5. Credibility, Corroboration, and Legal Betrayal of Rape Victims
Constance Backhouse

6. The Execution of Tommasina Teolis: Capital Punishment, Gender, and Ethnicity in Quebec in the First Half of the Twentieth Century
Don Fyson

7. The WTEA (1917), Canadian Women’s Suffrage, and Constitutional Thought in World War I
Lyndsay Campbell

8. Discipline as Deterrence: Labour Relations and the Silencing of Feminist Labour Activists
Joan Sangster and Julia Smith

9. Women Not Welcome: Martinie v. the Italian Society of Port Arthur
Laura Nigro, Lori Chambers, and Michel Beaulieu

10. Internal and External Advocacy for Legal Reform: Genesis of the Ontario Family Law Act [1986] 1967–1986
Taylor Starr

"This is an excellent collection of essays that offers important new insights into the many complex relationships between women and law and the crucial ways in which law has affected the experiences of women throughout Canadian history. The chapters dive into the details of law but they don’t lose sight of its real-world impacts and they compellingly highlight the lives of women who contested legal rules in big ways and small."

"Essays in the History of Canadian Law, Volume XII is an exceptional addition to the Essays in the History of Canadian Law series. Using carefully researched case studies, the authors, who include Canada’s leading historians of women and the law, shed much light on the gendered operation of the law and the oppressive nature of the legal system. The essays are both a culmination of decades of research and an invitation for the next generation of scholars to pursue important work on the history of women and the law."

"Essays in the History of Canadian Law, Volume XII is an original and refreshing – and long overdue – collection of essays by established and young historians telling new stories of Canadian women’s legal history. From fearless feminist trade unionists to ordinary women struggling against forms of discrimination so systemic as to seem natural and invisible, this collection represents the best of Canadian legal history – important stories of injustice andstruggles for justice, innovative research, and beautiful writing.."