Three things that might be wrong: surprises from the archives
Calling to mind Madam Justice Mary Southin’s commitments to legal history, ethics, process and constitutionalism, this talk will discuss three surprises Dr. Campbell has come across through her historical research on law over the last several years. The first concerns the operation of the doctrine of coverture in the United States in the early nineteenth century and its effects on married women’s participation in lawsuits. The second concerns the jurisdictional divide we normally take for granted between courts and legislatures: legislative contempt proceedings caused huge constitutional uproar both in Britain and in its colonies in the mid-nineteenth century. The third surprise arises from Dr. Campbell’s interest in nineteenth-century constitutional thought and the impact of the 1867 constitution on the development of that thought as it pertained to individual rights and discrimination. Offering as many questions as answers, this talk will cause us to reflect on the truths we as lawyers tell ourselves about our institutions and our pasts.
About the Speaker
Lyndsay Campbell
An associate professor cross-appointed between Law and History at the University of Calgary, Lyndsay Campbell holds an LLB and an LLM from UBC, and a PhD in Jurisprudence and Social Policy from UC Berkeley. She articled at McCarthy Tétrault and clerked at the BC Court of Appeal with Justices Douglas Lambert and Lance Finch. She co-edited Freedom’s Conditions in the U.S.-Canadian Borderlands in the Age of Emancipation (Carolina Academic Press, 2011) and Canada’s Legal Past: Looking Forward, Looking Back (University of Calgary Press, 2020). She has published widely in legal and historical journals, in Canada and elsewhere on the regulation of expression and on the legal and constitutional treatment of race in Canadian and American legal history. Her monograph Truth and Privilege: Libel Law in Massachusetts and Nova Scotia, 1820-1840 is due to be published later in 2021 by Cambridge University Press. Currently, her main research project is on the constitutional struggles between courts and legislatures in Britain and Newfoundland over the reach of parliamentary privilege between 1838 and 1845. She is also Associate Dean (Research) and Graduate Program Director in the Faculty of Law at the University of Calgary. An inveterate organizer, she is currently coordinating an international legal history conference on law and empires to be held in Maynooth, Ireland in July 2022, on the theme “Beyond the Pale: Legal Histories on the Edges of Empires.”
About the Madam Justice Mary Southin Lecture
The annual Madam Justice Mary Southin Lecture focuses on the law of equity or British Columbia legal history and is held alternately at the Allard School of Law and the Faculty of Law at the University of Victoria.
Madam Justice Southin graduated from the law school in 1952 and was called to the bar in 1953. Over the years, she earned a tremendous reputation with the Bench, her colleagues and litigants for her representation of a wide range of clients in a very broad litigation practice. Madam Justice Southin was appointed Queen's Counsel in 1969, was elected a Bencher in 1971, and became the Treasurer of the Law Society in 1977. She was the Editor in Chief of the British Columbia Law Reports from 1979 until her appointment to the Supreme Court of British Columbia in 1985. She was appointed to the Court of Appeal in 1998 and retired in 2006.
This important lecture pays tribute to her legacy by reminding others to pay heed to these two important influences - law of equity and legal history - on the legal profession.
- Development
- Alumni
- Faculty
- Graduate Students
- JD
- Research Talks