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

Features essays that reflect the different directions in which legal history in the settler colonies of the British Empire has developed. This title shows 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.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.