by Caron Rollins
The Faculty of Law and the Diana M. Priestly Law Library at the University of Victoria as facilitators for the study of legal history in British Columbia – forty years on.
April 1978 marked the Launch of the British Columbia Legal History Project. As described in BC Studies no 41, Spring 1979, the project created three sets of research materials: the Judge/Counsel card index, an aural history program, and a preliminary inventory of manuscript sources found in the Provincial Archives, now the BC Archives. Forty years on, what can be reported about these projects?
The Judge/Counsel card index, exists, “an index of cases by name of participating judges and counsel, covering the years 1867-1947 and including over 70,000 cards”. [1]A name authority index [2]was created to overcome the problem of surname-only references in the early case reports. Much has happened with case law searching techniques since 1978. Online legal databases were developed such as Quicklaw in the 1980s, CanLII in the 1990s, and starting in the 2000s, digitization of case law, statutes, and gazettes including the British Columbia Reports. These allow for full-text searching including judge and counsel names.
The aural history program concluded after twenty-five interviews with “some of the men and women who were directly involved in shaping the course of legal growth in this Province[3]”. Transcripts of the interviews are available at the Diana M. Priestly Law Library and at the Archives; tapes are available at BC Archives. Access to the names can be found using the University of Victoria library catalogue, under the heading: British Columbia Legal History Project. Aural History Programme.
A working draft of the preliminary inventory of manuscript sources was prepared, but the draft was not published. Access to online finding aids at the BC Archives website ease the discovery of sources, as well as ongoing digitization initiatives at UVIC and BC Archives.
The Faculty of Law and the Law Library have new projects
underway that support and encourage the study of British Columbia’s legal
history particularly in the light of the recommendations of the Truth and
Reconciliation Commission. Please watch for
a future installment.
[1] British Columbia Legal History Collection Project
[2] British Columbia Judge/Counsel Name Authority 1867-1947
[3] British Columbia Legal History Collection Project
