This third volume of Essays in the History of Canadian Law presents thoroughly researched, original essays in Nova Scotian legal history. An introduction by the editors is followed by ten essays grouped into four main areas of study. The first is the legal system as a whole: essays in this section discuss the juridical failure of the Annapolis regime, present a collective biography of the province's superior court judiciary to 1900, and examine the property rights of married women in the nineteenth century. The second section deals with criminal law, exploring vagrancy laws in Halifax in the late nineteenth century, aspects of prisons and punishments before 1880, and female petty crime in Halifax.

The third section, on family law, examines the
issues of divorce from 1750 to 1890 and child custody from 1866 to 1910. Finally, two essays relate
to law and the economy: one examines the Mines Arbitration Act of 1888; the other considers the
question of private property and public resources in the context of the administrative control of
water in Nova Scotia.

Philip Girard is University Research Professor and Professor of Law, History and Canadian Studies at Dalhousie University, where he is based at the Schulich School of Law. He has published widely on Canadian and comparative legal history. His biography Bora Laskin: Bringing Law to Life (Osgoode Society, 2005) received the Chalmers Award for the best book published in Ontario history in that year, while his Lawyers and Legal Culture in British North America: Beamish Murdoch of Halifax (Osgoode Society, 2011) received the Clio Atlantic award from the Canadian Historical Association in 2012. He is the associate editor of the Osgoode Society for Canadian Legal History.

Philip Girard's profile page

Jim Phillips is Professor of Law, History and Criminology at the University of Toronto, and editor-in-chief of the Osgoode Society for Canadian Legal History. He has co-edited four volumes of the Osgoode Society for Canadian Legal History’s Essays in the History of Canadian Law and, with Philip Girard, a volume on the history of Canada’s oldest surviving superior common law court, The Supreme Court of Nova Scotia 1754-2004: From Imperial Bastion to Provincial Oracle (Osgoode Society, 2004). He has published over fifty articles and book chapters on British imperial history and 18th-century India, on property and charities law, US legal history, and, principally, Canadian legal history. He is also the author, with Rosemary Gartner, of Murdering Holiness: The Trials of Franz Creffield and George Mitchell (University of British Columbia Press, 2003).

Jim Phillips' profile page

'The appearance of Volume III with its focus on the legal history of Nova Scotia represents an important new contribution, both because of its differing perspectives from eastern Canada and because the new volume aptly demonstrates the increasing scope of legal history that has occurred over the past decade in Canada ... As a series of essays on the regional legal history of Nova Scotia, this volume is exceptional; as a microcosm of the issues that need to be researched and analysed — questions about law reform, about criminal law and punishment, about families and family life, and about law and the economy — this volume is a contribution to a more textured understanding of Canadian legal history as a whole.'

The Canadian Bar Review

'The essays are thus an important manifestation of the "new" legal history and open up many insights

and avenues for both the Canadian legal historian and the comparativist. Most striking, however, is

the coherent picture of the scope and role of the legal order in nineteenth century Nova Scotia that

begins to emerge.'

American Review of Canadian Studies

'A major contribution to both regional and national historiography.'

Acadiensis