Law @ UofT: Law as a Great University Subject

Law @ UofT: Law as a Great University Subject
Markus Dubber

A Program

W.P.M. Kennedy, Foreword (1935) (University of Toronto Law Journal, inaugural issue):

There is evident at the University of Toronto a growing interest in law as a great university subject, as a scientific education, and as an instrument of social justice, which is all undoubtedly part of the world-wide renaissance of legal studies which we are to-day witnessing....
The University of Toronto Law Journal is thus born in a world of new legal activities and in the environment of special developments in the University of Toronto. It is appropriate to make a short statement of the aims and hopes of its founders and editors. First, all the editors are members of the University of Toronto--whether as teachers or as students. As students together in the same university, our common devotion to legal studies may provide further incentive to legal scholarship, and that enthusiasms given to a common editorial purpose will bear fruit in future authorship, constructive criticism, in deepening and purifying the social functions of law, and in elevating the standards of legal learning. Secondly, we hope that the University of Toronto Law Journal will contain contributions not merely on common-law subjects but on comparative law, ... on public law, on international law, and on special legal developments in the British Empire and the United States....

Origins

Kennedy (1879-1963)

Risk, The Many Minds of W.P.M. Kennedy

Risk, Volume 1 of the Journal: A Tribute and Belated Review
Risk, "When the World Was Turned Upside Down"

Friedland, The Enigmatic W.P.M. Kennedy

Cecil Wright (1904-1967)

Laskin, Cecil Wright: A Personal Memoir

Bickenbach & Kyer, The Harvardization of Caesar Wright (1983)

John Willis (1907-1997)

Risk, My Continuing Legal Education

Risk, In Memoriam

Bora Laskin (1912-1984)

Réaume, The Judicial Philosophy of Bora Laskin

Origin stories

The Fiercest Debate

The nature of legal education was debated in many parts of Europe and North America in the course of the nineteenth century... The issue came to the fore somewhat later in Ontario than in other locales; it involved an extended struggle between a powerful and entrenched professional body and Cecil A. Wright, a man of great determination; and, ironically, it gave new substance to enduring tensions between the legal community’s pride in its British heritage and Wright’s single-minded efforts to introduce American ideas and methods to the study of law in Ontario.

Cottage Country

Kennedy, a non-lawyer, who had, it seems, never taken a formal course in any legal subject, started the undergraduate “honour law” program between the wars. Graduates of that program received a BA degree from the University but were given no credit by the Law Society of Upper Canada, which operated Osgoode Hall Law School, the only professional law school in the province. Cecil Augustus Wright—usually referred to as “Caesar” Wright—was a professor at Osgoode (later its dean) and was unhappy with the way legal education was being delivered there. He thought of it as a “trade school.” In 1945, he and his good friend and fellow lawyer Sidney Smith, who had become the president of the University of Toronto, developed a plan5 to transfer professional legal education from Osgoode Hall to the University of Toronto. One aspect of the plan was that Bora Laskin, who many years later would become the chief justice of Canada, would leave the University of Toronto, where he had been a student and later a professor, and join Osgoode Hall Law School. Then, at an appropriate time, Wright, Laskin, and others, such as John Willis, would leave Osgoode and start a professional law school at the University of Toronto, with Wright as the dean. Wright wrote to Smith about coming to the University: “I will go—provided there is hope—and enough money to live on—and I am sure I can take Laskin and Willis—both of whom should be there.” ... The scheme required Kennedy’s blessing—or at least his acquiescence. Laskin was one of Kennedy’s favourite colleagues. So one summer day in mid-July 1945, after Laskin had discussed the strategy with Caesar Wright at Wright’s northern cottage, Wright and Laskin went to see Kennedy at his cottage near Kearney. Wright and Kennedy walked along a well-groomed waterside trail, with Laskin walking slightly behind. Kennedy could see some merit in the scheme as could President Smith, which, as events unfolded, did indeed, come to pass. Laskin went to Osgoode that year and in 1949 Wright, Willis, and Laskin left Osgoode and founded the so-called “modern law school” at the University of Toronto. (Friedland, The Enigmatic W.P.M. Kennedy)

Legal Education

Kennedy, Legal Subjects in the Universities of Canada (1933)

Kennedy, Law as a Social Science (1934):

FIRST YEAR
(1) Roman History
(2) Economics
(3) Philosophy
(4) Introduction to Legal Science
(5) History of the Judicial System and Equity
(6) The Law of Contract

SECOND YEAR
(1) Can. Constitutional History
(2) Philosophy
(3) The Law of Torts
(4) Criminal Law
(5) Real Property
(6) Roman & Comp. Civil Law
(7) Development of Int'l Law

THIRD YEAR
(1) Political Science
(2) Philosophy
(3) History of English Law
(4) English Constitutional Law
(5) Administrative Law
(6) Private International Law

FOURTH YEAR
(1) Modern Political Science
(2) Philosophy
(3) Canadian Constitutional Law
(4) Comparative Constitutional and Administrative Law
(5) Industrial Law
(6) Municipal Law
(7) Public International Law
(8) Jurisprudence