Lawyers and Legal Culture in British North America: Beamish Murdoch of Halifax (review)

This book is an important and impressive addition to the burgeoning field of Canadian legal history, written by one of its most distinguished practitioners. The book examines the lengthy and multi-faceted career of the nineteenth century Halifax lawyer, politician, and writer Beamish Murdoch (1800–1876). But as Girard tells us up front, this is not a traditional biography (p. 5). Rather, Girard’s focus on the broader legal culture within which Murdoch worked, and especially his use of comparisons and linkages with other British North American colonies, with Britain, and with the United States on a huge range of issues, highlights the place of lawyers in colonial society, and will appeal to legal and non-legal historians alike.

Three main and inter-related aspects of the book will be especially interesting to readers of this journal. The first is the notion of legal culture, which has been the subject of much attention from legal historians around the world in recent years. Rather than focusing on the development of the justice system, on legal doctrines enunciated by judges, or on how law affected communities and individuals in practice – which have been the mainstays of Canadian legal historiography – a legal culture approach highlights how lawyers did their work, conceived of their professional identity, and shaped and were shaped by the broader societies in which they lived. As a result, in addition to the internal legal dynamics that shaped what lawyers did, this book illustrates the constant interplay of the profession with notions of class, race, religion, and gender, among other social forces.

This cultural approach is especially prominent in the examination of Murdoch’s apprenticeship. Girard highlights the eighteenth and nineteenth century transatlantic links between Nova Scotia, London, and Dublin that shaped how Murdoch’s mentor thought about law, liberty, and governance – how he conceived of racial equality and Catholic emancipation, for example – and how those ideas were passed onto the young Murdoch during his training in Halifax. But Girard combines this intellectual history approach with an investigation of how lawyers like Murdoch established their practices, earned their money, and argued their clients’ cases on issues of everyday law. As Girard contends, law was ubiquitous in nineteenth century British North America, and as Murdoch began his professional life very few of his clients came from the colonial elite. Rather, in the early part of his career most of those who brought their cases to him were small merchants and craftsmen; at least 10% of those early clients were also women. Here Girard does a very good job drawing out of Murdoch’s case load examples which illustrate how everyday law often involved appeals to social norms rather than legal ones. A good example is how Murdoch won an 1824 child support case on behalf of an unmarried mother – by presenting his client as a wronged and tragic woman who nonetheless displayed an admirable maternal instinct. The law might not have been on her side, but after what Girard calls Murdoch’s “panegyric to wounded maternity,” the jury was (p. 92).

The second aspect of the book likely to appeal to readers of this journal is Girard’s examination of the intellectual dimensions of pre-Confederation constitutional and political debate. In addition to his role as a lawyer, Murdoch was also at different points in his life an M.L.A., a civic official in Halifax, and a prominent legal author. In these roles, he had an opportunity to articulate and affect the developing Nova Scotian polity. Here Girard’s work will add to familiar narratives of Canadian political history. Despite his liberal and reformist tendencies in many areas, Murdoch was a noted opponent of responsible government, and Girard pays close attention to the way his constitutional vision differed from that of Joseph Howe. Murdoch adhered to the British ‘Country’ school of political thought, believed in the British mixed and balanced constitutional model, and saw real peril...