Viscount Haldane
Subtitle: "the wicked step-father of the Canadian constitution"
By: Frederick Vaughan
Contributors: Osgoode Society for Canadian Legal History
Publisher: Published for the Osgoode Society for Canadian Legal History by University of Toronto Press
Published: 2010
Place of publication: Toronto; Buffalo
Language: eng
Number of pages: 307
ISBN-13: 9781442642379
Subjects: Constitutional history; Canada; Canada. Supreme Court; Biographies; Hommes d'État; Philosophy; Influence; Histoire constitutionnelle; Constitutional law; Canada. Cour suprême; Droit constitutionnel; Philosophie; Biography; Statesmen
Description: "Viscount Richard Burdon Haldane was a philosopher, lawyer, British MP, and member of the British Cabinet during the First World War. He is best known to Canadians as a judge of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council (Canada's highest court of appeal until 1949), in which role he was extremely influential in altering the constitutional relations between the federal parliament and the provincial legislatures.

Chafing under the British North America Act of 1867, which provided for a strong central government, the provincial governments appealed to the Judicial Committee and were successful in gaining greater provincial legislative autonomy through the constitutional interpretations of the law lords. In Viscount Haldane, Frederick Vaughan concentrates on Haldane's role in these rulings, arguing that his jurisprudence was shaped by his formal study of German philosophy, especially that of G.W.F. Hegel. Vaughan's analysis of Haldane's legal philosophy and its impact on the Canadian constitution concludes that his Hegelian legacy is very much alive in today's Supreme Court of Canada and that it continues to shape the constitution and the lives of Canadians since the adoption of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms."--BOOK JACKET.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [291]-302) and index.
Table of contents: title: Göttingen, 1874; title: Home and school for the mind; title: The University of Edinburgh and the seeds of German philosophy; title: The practice of law and life in parliament; title: From the inns of court to the War Office; title: Haldane in the school of the master; title: Haldane in the shadow of Lord Watson; title: Haldane and the reign of Sittlichkeit; title: In the high court of Hegel; title: The state and the reign of relativity; title: Supreme tribunal of the empire; title: Recollections and last days; title: Postscript : the Haldane legacy and the modern court.