In 1888, the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council ruled in the St. Catherine’s case. This precedent-setting decision would define the legal contours of Aboriginal title in Canada for almost a hundred years. In Flawed Precedent, preeminent legal scholar Kent McNeil examines the trial and its context in detail, demonstrating how erroneous assumptions and prejudicial attitudes about Indigenous peoples and their land use influenced the case. He also discusses the effects the decision had on law and policy until the 1970s when its authority was finally questioned in Calder and in other key rulings. McNeil has written a compelling account of a landmark case that undermined Indigenous land rights for almost a century.

Kent McNeil is an emeritus distinguished research professor at Osgoode Hall Law School at York University.

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• Winner, John T. Saywell Prize for Canadian Constitutional Legal History, The Osgoode Society for Canadian Legal History
• Short-listed, Canada Prize in the Humanities and Social Sciences, Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences