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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 August 2023
I graduated from law school in 1970 and I’ve been proud every day since of being a lawyer. My father was a lawyer, as are our two sons, and I’ve always seen lawyers as democracy’s warriors: the people who protect rights and by protecting rights protect justice. You law students are the future democracy warriors—actually, the future of democracy full stop—so this lecture is dedicated to you and to the hope that you will make justice your transcendent preoccupation, no matter what you decide to do with your law degree. You are, after all, in law school where you have a window on what the law says—guided by your professors—and a window on what the law looks like outside the walls of your classrooms—guided by watching the news.
This Coxford Lecture was delivered via Zoom at the University of Western Ontario on February 9, 2022.
1 Before the Truckers’ Protest that paralyzed Ottawa in early 2022.
2 163 US 537 (1896).
3 Bradwell v The State of Illinois, 83 US 130 (1873).
4 Langstaff v Bar of Quebec [1915], 47 RJQ 131.
5 Squire v Squire and O’Callaghan, [1905] P 4 (Probate, Divorce and Admiralty Division).
6 Re Noble and Wolf, [1949] 4 DLR 374 (Ont CA), rev’d Noble et al v Alley, [1951] SCR 64.
7 Christie v The York Corporation, [1940] SCR 139.
8 Salisbury to Halsbury, November 1897, quoted in RFV Heuston, Lives of the Lord Chancellors (Oxford, 1964) at 57.
9 Herbert Spencer, quoted in Histor, “The Baby on the Doorstep” (1920) 29:22 Reedy’s Mirror at 428.
10 See Plessy, supra note 2.
11 347 US 483 (1954).
12 Letter from Lillian Hellman to the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) (19 May 1952) in Ellen Schrecker, The Age of McCarthyism: A Brief History with Documents (Bedford Books of St Martin’s Press, 1994) at 201-02.
13 Emmet John Hughes, The Ordeal of Power: A Political Memoir of the Eisenhower Years (Atheneum, 1963) at 201 [emphasis removed].
14 R J Johnson, quoted in Jane Gordon, Morgan Chilson & Laura Randall, “In the Classroom: Brown’s Children’s Children”, New York Times (18 January 2004), online: https://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/18/education/in-the-classroom-brown-s-children-s-children.html
15 See Binjamin Wilkomirski, Fragments: Memories of a Wartime Childhood, translated by Carol Brown Janeway (Schocken, 1997).
16 Ibid at 128-30.