The fourth volume in the Canadian State Trials series examines the legal issues surrounding perceived security threats and the repression of dissent from the outset of World War One through the Great Depression. War prompted the development of new government powers and raised questions about citizenship and Canadian identity, while the ensuing interwar years brought serious economic challenges and unprecedented tensions between labour and capital.

The chapters in this edited collection, written by leading scholars in numerous fields, examine the treatment of enemy aliens, conscription and courts martial, sedition prosecutions during the war and after the Winnipeg General Strike, and the application of Criminal Code and Immigration Act laws to Communist Party leaders, On to Ottawa Trekkers, and minority groups. These historical events shed light on contemporary dilemmas: What are the limits of dissent in war, emergencies, and economic crisis? What limits should be placed on government responses to real and perceived challenges to its authority?

Barry Wright is a professor in the Departments of Law and History, Director of Kroeger College, and Associate Dean of the Faculty of Public Affairs at Carleton University

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Eric Tucker, B.A., LL.B., LL.M. is a professor at Osgoode Hall Law School, York University. He has published extensively on the history and current state of labour and employment law. He is the author of Administering Danger in the Workplace (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1990) and co-author of Labour Before the Law: The Legal Regulation of Workers’ Collective Action (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001, with Judy Fudge) and Self-Employed Workers Organize (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2005, with Cynthia Cranford, Judy Fudge, and Leah Vosko). He is also the editor of Working Disasters: The Politics of Recognition and Response (Amityville, NY: Baywood Publishing Company, 2006).

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Susan Binnie has taught criminology and legal history at the University of Toronto, York University, and the University of Ottawa. She is a former legal historian at the Law Society of Upper Canada.

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‘Excellent introduction by the editors… Wright, Tucker, and Binnie have done all Canadians a significant service in continuing the work started by Greenwood in the 1990s.’

Left History vol 20:01:2016

‘This volume is a superb structural analysis of how Canada’s courts were, and can be, used as state instruments of tyranny. It represents a number of fascinating and valuable questions.’

BC Studies March 2016