As the leading legal historian of his generation in Canada and professor at McGill University for over three decades, Blaine Baker (1952–2018) was known for his unique personality, teaching style, intellectual cosmopolitanism, and deep commitment to the place of Canadian legal history in the curriculum of law faculties.

Law, Life, and the Teaching of Legal History examines important themes in Canadian legal history through the prism of Baker’s career. Essays discuss Baker’s own research, his influence within McGill’s law faculty, his complex personality, and the relationship between the private and the public in the life of a university intellectual at the turn of the twenty-first century. Inspired by topics Baker took up in his own writing, contributors use Baker’s broad interests in legal culture to reflect on fundamental themes across Canadian legal history, including legal education, gender and race, technology, nation building and national identity, criminal law and marginalized populations, and constitutionalism.

Law, Life, and the Teaching of Legal History offers a contemporary analysis of Canadian legal history and thoughtfully engages with what it means to honour one individual’s enduring legacy in the study of law.

Ian C. Pilarczyk is lecturer at Tufts University.

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Angela Fernandez is professor of law cross-appointed to the Department of History at the University of Toronto.

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Brian Young is professor emeritus of history at McGill University and the author and co-author of several books including, with John Dickinson, A Short History of Quebec, now in its fourth edition.

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“An essential purchase for all academic libraries supporting law or history programs. I also highly recommend it to anyone with an interest in legal history, legal education, or biographies. A warning to the reader, however: between Professor Baker’s publications and those of the contributors, reading this book will certainly result in the lengthening of your reading list.” Canadian Law Library Review