This September, the Osgoode Society for Canadian Legal History will celebrate Professor Backhouse’s distinguished career and lasting impact. The Osgoode Society has published more than 125 books on Canadian legal history and preserved more than 715 oral histories since its founding in 1979. It will celebrate Professor Backhouse alongside fellow senior scholars Jim Phillips and Philip Girard at its “Reimagining Justice: Past, Present and Future of Canadian Legal History” conference in Toronto on September 25 and 26.
The celebration will begin with a reception on September 25 in Toronto, bringing together colleagues and members of the legal history community to reflect on Professor Backhouse’s contributions and the evolution of the field. A full-day conference on September 26 will continue the conversation, featuring scholarship inspired by the work of Jim Phillips and Philip Girard, as well as a judicial roundtable examining the influence of legal history on Canadian law and the arguments brought before the courts.
Professor Backhouse has made pioneering contributions to the study of legal history, criminal law, human rights, and women and the law, transforming our understanding of the ways law has shaped and been shaped by questions of gender, race, discrimination and social justice in Canada.
Her longstanding relationship with the Osgoode Society reflects the depth of her contribution to the field. She has published six books with the Society, spanning some of the most important questions in Canadian legal history:
- Petticoats and Prejudice: Women and Law in Nineteenth-Century Canada (Published with Women’s Press,1991).
- Colour-Coded: A Legal History of Racism in Canada, 1900–1950 (Published with the University of Toronto Press, 1999)
- The Heiress versus the Establishment: Mrs. Campbell’s Campaign for Legal Justice (Published with University of British Columbia Press, 2004), co-authored with Nancy Backhouse
- Carnal Crimes: Sexual Assault Law in Canada, 1900–1975 (Published with Irwin Law, 2008)
- Claire L’Heureux-Dubé: A Life (Published with University of British Columbia Press, 2017)
These works have examined the historical development of Canadian law through the experiences of women, racialized communities and other groups whose encounters with the legal system have often been overlooked.
Professor Backhouse’s distinguished career includes numerous major honours, including the SSHRC Gold Medal for Achievement in Research, the Killam Prize, a Trudeau Fellowship, election as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, and appointments to the Order of Canada and Order of Ontario. She was also the first scholar from outside the United States to serve as President of the American Society for Legal History.
The Faculty of Law congratulates Professor Backhouse on this well-deserved recognition of her extraordinary contributions to Canadian legal scholarship and the field of legal history.