Schedule here or after the jump.From his path-breaking essay on capital punishment in Albion’s Fatal Tree to his more recent work on low law and the regulation of labour, Douglas Hay’s writing has inspired historians and legal scholars around the world for over forty years. While his primary focus has been on eighteenth-century English law and society, Doug has also contributed to Canadian legal history through his work on the reception and administration of the criminal law in Quebec following the transition to British rule. This symposium, co-organized by Doug’s colleagues in York History, Osgoode Hall Law School, and others across Canada, is an occasion for his Canadian friends and colleagues to honour his recent retirement and to celebrate his enormous contributions to scholarship.
Douglas Hay (credit: York U)
The Symposium is open to anybody interested in legal history (all jurisdictions), law and society, and related fields. Students are encouraged to attend. If you wish to attend, we do ask you to register so that we can have a sense of the numbers.
Thursday, May 5th, 2016, Founders College Common Room, York University
Doug’s Work, Discretion, and Certainty
Chair: Shelley Gavigan (Osgoode Hall Law School)
Patrick Connor (York University), “Royal Clemency, Race, and the Law in Upper Canada.”
Carolyn Strange (Australian National University), “Majesty in the Republic? Vivifying the Wraithlike Presence of Doug Hay’s Mercy Analysis in U.S. Historiography.”
Lisa Kerr (Queen’s University), “Life Imprisonment as Penal Alternative.”
James Muir (University of Alberta), “Justice from Injustice: Documenting wrongful convictions, 1988-2015.”
Law and Medicine
Chair: Molly Ladd-Taylor (York University)
Blake Brown (Saint Mary’s University), “Doctors, Lawyers, and Medical Malpractice in Late-Nineteenth-Century Canada”
Elizabeth Koester (University of Toronto), “A Surprising History: Eugenics and Law in Ontario, 1910 to 1939.”
Law and Labour
Chair: Paul Craven (York University, Emeritus)
Christopher Frank (University of Manitoba), “Female Factory Inspectors, the Courts, and the Struggle Against Workplace Fines and Deductions, 1893-1913.”
Eric Tucker (Osgoode Hall Law School), “When Wage Theft Was a Crime.”
Friday, May 6th, 2016, Ignat Kaneff Building, Room 1014, Osgoode Hall Law School
English Criminal Procedure, 17-19th Centuries
Chair: Jim Phillips (University of Toronto)
Karen Macfarlane (University of Toronto), “Religion and class concerns about perjury and oaths in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century England.”
Randa Helfield (Independent Researcher), “Let the Facts Speak for Themselves: The Empiricist Origins of the Right to Remain Silent.”
British North America in the Early 19th Century
Chair: Philip Girard (Osgoode Hall Law School)
Anna Jarvis (York University), “Duelling, Honour, and the Unwritten Law.”
Blaine Baker (McGill University), “Musings of an Eighteenth-Century Chief Justice.”
Jim Phillips (University of Toronto), “Exile for Offenders: Banishment and Transportation from British North America, 1750-1850.”
Military and International Law
Chair: Stephen Brooke (York University)
Tracey Dowdeswell (Osgoode Hall Law School), “At the Threshold of International Law: The Brussels Conference of 1874.”
Jennine Hurl-Eamon (Trent University), "Power, Agency and the Eighteenth-Century Military Courts"
Gender and the Law
Chair: Kathryn McPherson (York University)
Karen Pearlston (University of New Brunswick), “Avoiding the Vulva: Judicial Interpretations of Lesbian Sex under the Divorce Act, 1968.”
Yael Machtinger (York University), “Legal History‘s Utility: Investigating the Commensurability of Seemingly Contradictory Legal Orders.”
Race, Space and the Law
Chair: David Koffman (York University)
Eric Adams (University of Alberta) and Jordan Stanger-Ross (University of Victoria), “The Promise of Law: The Legalized Racism of Dispossession of Japanese Canadians.”
Sarah Hamill (Osgoode Hall Law School), “Sex, Race, and Motel Guests: Another Look at King v. Barclay.”
Douglas C. Harris (UBC) and Fergus McDonnell (Fasken Martineau), “Private Property and Public Fisheries on the Douglas Lake Cattle Ranch.”
Dinner (RSVP Required).
After-dinner remarks: John Beattie (University of Toronto), Nick Rogers (York University), and Eric Tucker (Osgoode Hall Law School).
