New Book on Legacy of Former Chief Justice Bora Laskin

Canadian legal publisher Irwin Law has just published The Laskin Legacy: Essays in Commemoration of Chief Justice Bora Laskin:

"This book is a collection of seventeen scholarly articles and personal reminiscences that examine the life and career of the late Bora Laskin, former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada. The essays are written by family members, judges, law professors, and lawyers whose recollections about Laskin flesh out the life of a man 'at the summit of Canada’s political and legal life,' with commentary from some whose paths crossed his. The book includes examinations of Laskin's contribution to legal education and scholarship, as well as to jurisprudence in constitutional law, administrative and labour law, and private law. As well, it provides discussion of Laskin's impact on the Supreme Court of Canada itself".

Laskin was named Chief Justice of Canada in December 1973 and served on the Supreme Court of Canada for 14 years. He died on March 26, 1984, at the age of 71.

Some of the most famous cases heard by the Supreme Court under Laskin's leadership include:

• Calder v. British Columbia (Attorney General) [1973] S.C.R. 313 (aboriginal title)
• R. v. City of Sault Ste-Marie [1978] 2 S.C.R. 1299 (strict liability offenses)
• Reference re a Resolution to amend the Constitution, [1981] 1 S.C.R. 753 (unwritten constitutional convention under which amendments to the Constitution require a substantial degree of provincial consent)

For more background, I suggest reading Philip Girard's 2005 full-length biography of the man entitled Bora Laskin: Bringing Law to Life (Toronto : Osgoode Society for Canadian Legal History):

"In his first career, as a human rights activist, university professor and labour arbitrator, Bora Laskin used the law to make Canada a better place for workers, racial and ethnic minorities, and the disadvantaged. Then, in what he called his 'accidental career' as a judge on the Ontario Court of Appeal and later chief justice of Canada, he embarked on a quest to make the judiciary more responsive to modern Canadian expectations of justice and fundamental rights. In the struggles of a man who fought anti-Semitism, corporate capital, omnipotent university boards, the Law Society of Upper Canada and his judicial colleagues, Philip Girard chronicles the emergence of modern Canada".