The Osgoode Society Legal History Workshop is an informal evening seminar, starting at 6.30 p.m., and conducted over zoom. Participants are graduate students and faculty in law and history from U of T, York, McMaster and other institutions, as well as lawyers, judges and law students. All law students with an interest in legal history are welcome. Law students may also take the workshop for credit – see Course List.
If you would like to be put on the mailing list and to receive the papers, please send an email to j.phillips@utoronto.ca.
2026-2027 SCHEDULE
FALL TERM
Wednesday, September 16 – Ian Kyer, Independent Scholar, ‘Wallace Nesbitt KC: An early advocate of Indigenous Rights’
Wednesday, September 30 – Allan Greer, McGill University, ‘Corporations and the Making of Canadian Space’
Monday, October 5 – Hamar Foster, University of Victoria, ‘The History of Aboriginal Title in British Columbia.’ NOTE that this is the annual R. Roy McMurtry Lecture in Canadian Legal History. It will be delivered at 5:30 p.m. in the Moot Court Room at the University of Toronto Law School. This is an addition to the schedule. Those who attend can have this credited towards their attendance requirement. Students can also write a comment on this lecture to be submitted within a week of the lecture.
Wednesday, October 14 - Laura Cameron, Stockwoods Barristers, ‘F. R. Scott and R v Brodie: Going to bat for Lady Chatte’
Wednesday, October 28 - Madalyn Manziuk, University of Alberta, and Taylor Starr, University of Toronto: “We are living in an epidemic of violence”: A Legal History of Advocacy at the Limits of Law in Twentieth-Century Northern Canada’
Wednesday, November 4 – No workshop scheduled. University of Toronto Law School and Osgoode Hall Law School Reading Weeks.
Tuesday, November 10 – Optional Session for students taking the workshop for credit. Melvyn Green, ‘The LeDain Commission of Inquiry into the Non-Medical Use of Drugs.’ This talk will take place online starting at 5:30 p.m. Those who attend can have this credited towards their attendance requirement. Students can also write a comment on this lecture to be submitted within a week after the lecture.
Wednesday, November 11 – No workshop scheduled. American Society for Legal History Conference, Banff
Wednesday, November 18 – Lyndsay Campbell, University of Calgary, ‘Cherneskey v Armadale Publishing Co and the history of the fair comment defence in Canada’
Wednesday, December 2 – Maggie Ross, University of Toronto, ‘No G-String, No Service: The Canadian Association of Burlesque Entertainers, Anti-Nudity Law, and the Whorearchy, 1978-1983. (Optional for students at Osgoode Hall Law School because it is during the exam period)
WINTER TERM
Wednesday, January 13 - Robert Sharpe, Ontario Court of Appeal (retired), ‘Revolution by Consent or by Violence? Harold Laski’s Libel Trial’
Wednesday, January 27 – Dan Priel, Osgoode Hall Law School and City University of Hong Kong, ‘Action Against the Free Press: When Ghosts Visited the Supreme Court of Canada’
Wednesday, February 10 – TBA
Wednesday, February 24 – TBA
Wednesday, March 10 – Hamar Foster, University of Victoria, ‘Section 141 of the Indian Act in Action: Two Cases from British Columbia’
Wednesday, March 24 - Jim Phillips, University of Toronto Law School, ‘A History of Parliamentary Divorce in Canada’
Wednesday, March 31 or April 7 – Zoe Savitsky, Osgoode Hall Law School, ‘The Legal History of Corporate Personhood in Canada’