This volume marks the 2007 centenary of the Supreme Court of Alberta. These essays examine the extent to which the Court articulated an Albertan response to the varied legal questions of the past century. Canvassing the Court's jurisprudential history, the volume includes thematic essays examining First Nations' hunting rights, oil and gas law, water law, gender, the Hutterites and religious freedom, and family law. Additional essays detail the court's history through its early personnel, the World War I crisis over the court's independence, and the question of whether the court voiced an Albertan take on the constitution. What emerges is not the image of a maverick judiciary, but rather a court that pursued legal principles that would stand anywhere in the nation.

Jonathan Swainger is Associate Professor of History at the University of Northern British Columbia and co-editor, with Constance Backhouse, of People and Place: Historical Influences on Legal Culture, also published by UBC Press.

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"Nine writers provide essays on such topics as Hutterites, water rights, marriage, and Indians. Some of the authors deal with specific topics. Other essays by Wayne N. Renke, Dale Gibson, Arlene J. Kwasniak, Alastair R. Lucas, Marie L. Gordon, Jennifer Koshan and Elizabeth Whitsitt made good use of case studies as well as supreme court authority to produce a most interesting and readable book." Hugh Dempsey, Alberta History, March 2008

"Like recent works on Nova Scotia and Manitoba, Swainger's volume deepens our understanding of the pivotal role courts play in shaping and reflecting the society in which they interpret law and dispense justice." Eric M. Adams, University of Alberta, The American Review of Canadian Studies, Winter 2008

"The nine essays offered here are highly creditable, exhaustively researched, carefully controlled, firmly stated, and engagingly written. The editing is impeccable." Christopher English, Canadian Book Review Annual Online, 2007