Understanding Law for the Social Sciences provides students with essential tools to study Canadian law from various disciplinary perspectives. It introduces key legal principles and concepts, ensuring that social science students build a strong foundation to engage confidently with legal topics.
The book focuses on legal doctrines, helping students understand how these doctrines are applied by lawyers, judges, and legal scholars. To achieve this aim, it begins with chapters that cover the sources of law, legal reasoning, and statutory interpretation. Subsequent chapters introduce substantive areas of law, including constitutional law, criminal law, administrative law, contract law, tort law, property law, labour law, and environmental law. For each of these areas, the text not only outlines core concepts and terminology but also illustrates how legal controversies intersect with public debates, state authority, self-governance, and public policy.
Designed as an introduction to law and legal concepts, Understanding Law for the Social Sciences prepares undergraduate students to engage with legal matters that they might further examine in law school or explore in social science graduate study. While the book is especially beneficial for political science students due to its focus on public policy, its broad scope offers valuable insights for anyone interested in understanding the role of law in society.

Dennis Baker is an assistant professor of political science at the University of Guelph.

Dennis Baker's profile page

Byron Sheldrick is chair of the Political Science Department at the University of Guelph. His research involves the intersection of law and politics and the way social movements organize around legal issues. Before joining the University of Guelph he taught at the University of Winnipeg and at Keele University in the United Kingdom.

Byron Sheldrick's profile page