Law, Crime, Punishment and Society

166 Review • Greg Marquis Reviews Law, Crime, Punishment and Society Greg Marquis Black Eyes All of the Time. Anne McGillivray and Brenda Comaskey. Toronto: University ofToronto Press, 1999. ZOO pp. Discriminaticm an,i Denial: Systemic Racism in Ontario's Legal aud Justice Systems, 1892-1961. Clayton James Mosher. Toronto: University ofToronto Press, 1998. 230 pp. Essays in the History ofO madian Law Vlll T.11 Hunour ofR.C.B. Risk. Eds. G. Blaine Baker and Jim Phillips. Toronto: Osgoode Society, 1999. 585 pp. The Expmuling Prison: The Crisis i11 Crime cmd Punishment and the Search fo,. Alternatives. David Cayley. Toronto: J-louse of Anansi Press Ltd., 1998. 388 pp. Final Appeal: Decision Making iu Canadian Courts of A[ipeal. Ian Green e et al. Toronto:James Lorimer and Company Ltd., 1998. 235 pp. Justice in Paradise. Bruce Clark. Montreal: McGiU-Queen's University Press, 1999. 371 pp. Making Sense of Sentencing. Eds. Julian V. Roberts and David r. Cole. Toronto: University ofToronto Press, 1999. 363 pp. Manufacturing Guilt: Wrongful Convictfrms i,i Canada. BarrieAnderson with Dawn Anderson. Halirax: Femwood Press, 1998. 143 pp. Women 011 Guard: Discrimination and Harassment in Correctio,is. Maeve McMahon. Toronto: University ofToronto Press, 1999. 202 pp. Volume 36 • No. 1 • (Printemps 2001 Spring) Journal of Canadian Studies • Revue d'etudes c.anadiennes L egal studies in Canada are experiencing a golden age as articles, anthologies and monographs produced by academics trained in the 1980s and 1990s continue to appear. Nine books, nearly SO authors and more than 2,000 pages oftext and notes later, this reviewer is suffering from intellectual fatigue, but the type that comes from a good workout. rn terms of Canada's legal history, the Osgoode Society has been the leading force for publication for two decades. As of 1999 it had produced more than three dozen monographs or collections of essays. Its most recent anthology is edited by G. Blaine Baker and Jim Phillips, law professors who are also noted legal historians . Essays in the Hist01y ofCanadian Law Vlllevolved out of a 1998 conference dedicated to pioneering legal scholar R.C.B. Risk. In the 1970s the American-trained Risk published on the relationship between law and the economy in nineteenthcentury Ontario. Significantly, these essays did not appear in history publications, but in law journals. His work is largely unknown to most Canadian historians, but Risk has exerted an important influence on legal history scholars associated with law faculties. His stature is acknowledged by two scholars of international repute, Robert Gordon and David Sugarman, and his body of work and its effect are assessed in an insightful chapter by G. Blaine Baker. Most of the contributors to the Risk festschrift are involved with law schools, and the tone of most chapters tends towards classic legal history. Many of the contributions will challenge undergraduate students of history or criminal justice. Exceptions include Constance Backhouse's study of a racially motivated murder of a member of the Onyota'a:ka (Oneida) First Nation in 1902, a case study that underscores the lack of research on race and law in Canadian history. Hamar Foster's examination of Indian title in British Columbia and John McLaren's article on Chinese criminality in British Columbia from 1890 to 1920 also have broader appeal than mainstream legal history. White society "racialized" the Chinese not only through stereotypes, but through criminal law and law enforcement, especiaUy in the areas of gambling, prostitution and opium smoking. McLaren indicates that although tl1e Chinese in British Columbia were subjected to legal and bureaucratic racism, police harassment and informal discrimination, as a "despised minority" they also appealed to the rule oflaw and the courts for protection. On a more mundane level t.hey utilized the civil courts for disputed commercial transactions. Because most criminal convictions against the Chinese were summary offences, it was rare for them to surface in appeal courts. Yet according to McLaren, appellate judges in British Columbia were guided by law, not racial prejudice, in many of their ruUngs involving the Chinese. 167 168 Review • Greg Marquis Peter Oliver's chapter on the judiciary in the historiography of Upper Canada offers a counter-revisionist critique of recent interpretations that...