Law and Public Authority: Sir John Beverley Robinson and the Purposes of the Criminal Law

DONALD J. MCMAHON

ABSTRACT

In this article, the author examines the various functions, both judicial and political, assigned to the criminal justice system of Upper Canada by John Beverley Robinson, Chief Justice of the province from 1829-1863. By analyzing the charges delivered to grand juries at Criminal Assizes held throughout the colony in the 1830s and the early 1940s, the author assesses what ideological dimensions the system of criminal law was given by the Chief Justice and how it was used to legitimate a political order, which was increasingly becoming a source of dissension and discontent within the province. The analysis concludes with a consideration of the influences that the Chief Justice's approach had on the subsequent development of the common law in nineteenth-century Ontario and suggests that, although the particular political order which the Chief Justice was concerned to defend in the 1830s disappeared, Robinson's approach to the social uses of law had an important impact on the development of jurisprudence in Ontario.

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Citation: (1988) 46(2) U.T. Fac. L. Rev. 390.
Copyright © 1988. University of Toronto Faculty of Law Review.
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