The Grand Experiment

This collection of essays by Canada's and Australasia's most accomplished legal historians is a "must" for academic libraries and those who share these scholars' interest in the legal culture of the British colonial world. -- Peter Karsten, author of Between Law and Custom: "High" and "Low" Legal Cultures in the Lands of the British Diaspora, 1600-1900

Reveals how local life and culture in selected colonies interacted with the rule of law that accompanied the British colonial project. This book presents an account of the 'incomplete implementation of the British constitution' in the colonies. It explores themes of legal translation, local understandings, and judicial biography.The essays in this volume reflect the exciting new directions in which legal history in the settler colonies of the British Empire has developed. The contributors show how local life and culture in selected settlements influenced, and was influenced by, the ideology of the rule of law that accompanied the British colonial project. Exploring themes of legal translation, local understandings, judicial biography, and “law at the boundaries,” they examine the legal cultures of dominions in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand to provide a contextual and comparative account of the “incomplete implementation of the British constitution” in these colonies.