How it all Changed on January 22, 1949, and Why the History of Legal Education Matters
January 22, 1949 represents a watershed in legal education in Canada, but it is a date and a moment in history that has been largely forgotten. This is a shame. And more than that, to invoke a version of the old adage, if we have no idea where we have come from, how are we to have any idea where we are, or where we are heading.
But back to the 62nd anniversary of a big day. On January 22, 1949, the headline of the Globe & Mail carried the banner “Hall Pushed Back 25 Years, Osgoode Dean Says, Quits.” Cecil (Caeser) Wright, who had been appointed Dean of Osgoode Hall Law School in 1947, had resigned in protest, along with three of Osgoode Hall Law School’s five full time faculty (Bora Laskin, John Willis and Stan Edwards), in the wake of a report from the Benchers of the Law Society of Upper Canada reaffirming the Law Society’s control over legal education, and its view that legal education should be primarily vocational in nature. The purpose of studying law, in other words, was to train lawyers in the Bencher’s view. Since joining the law school as a lecturer in 1927, Wright searched for an alternative vision, one rooted in the study of law as a set of ideas. Wright memorably told the Globe & Mail, “If medical education was controlled by the medical profession as law is by the legal profession, we would be back in the days of leeches.”
While this dramatic era in the history of legal education is well-documented in The Fiercest Debate: Cecil A. Wright, the Bencher, and Legal Education in Ontario 1923-1957, by C. Ian Kyer and Jerome E. Bickenbach, the reason I have the Globe & Mail headline from 1949 in front of me is courtesy of Stan Edward’s scrapbook. Stan Edwards passed away in May of 2010, and his widow, Margaret Edwards, generously donated his scrapbook to Osgoode’s History and Archives Project. Edwards kept clippings from all of Toronto’s papers from that era which covered the story in extraordinary detail. He also kept his own resignation letter to the Treasurer of the Law Society.
The high profile resignation by Wright and the other faculty members signaled the end of an era of domination by the profession in legal education in Ontario. While the Benchers appointed replacement faculty and a new Dean, C.E. Smalley-Baker, Osgoode was soon besieged by rising enrolments, deteriorating facilities and the search for a forward looking identity. The situation worsened until Osgoode affiliated with a young and energetic York University in 1968.
While Stan Edwards joined Fraser & Beatty in 1949 to begin a distinguished five decades of legal practice, Wright, Willis and Laskin joined the University of Toronto, and pursued their vision of University-based legal education. Osgoode itself was similarly destined to embrace its distinct version of this vision. The ideal of experiential education, so much a feature of Osgoode’s past, similarly helped to define its future. It is no accident, for example, that Osgoode pioneered clinical legal education in Canada through Parkdale Community Legal Services (celebrating its 40th anniversary in 2011). Osgoode has come to reflect a culture of “law in action” dovetailed with a culture of intellectual engagement precisely because of its distinct history.
In this sense, Caeser Wright, who spent twenty-two years at Osgoode as a faculty member and Dean (1927-1949), had as dramatic an impact on Osgoode as he had at the University of Toronto, (where he spent a further fourteen years as Dean (1949-1965)). That influence spread to the new law schools which emerged in Ontario in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s (Western, Queen’s, Ottawa, and Windsor). There is not a law student in Ontario whose experience is not touched by the events of January 22, 1949. Understanding those events, where they came from and where they led, sheds light on legal education, the legal profession and the personalities and social forces which shape them. That is the premise – and the promise – behind Osgoode’s History and Archives Project (OHAP), which seeks to preserve, explore and share the history of legal education. I hope we find other treasures like Stan Edward’s scrapbook, so that we can tell our history more vividly, stimulate further research and develop exhibits, digital resources and oral histories which will ensure the story of legal education comes alive for generations to come.
We would be delighted to receive other scrapbooks, memorabilia, photographs, or simply hear your story. Please contact me at lawdean@osgoode.yorku.ca or write directly to ohap@osgoode.yorku.ca.