Like a Diamond Jubilee (WADRT Blue Rodeo)

Diamond Jubilee talk was nearly inescapable about a week ago, the Queen of Canada has been on throne for 60 years. This got me ta thinkin’ about Canada in 1952 and more specifically (because this is a law blog) about our legal institutions and specifically the Supreme Court of Canada 60 years ago.

In 1952 the SCC was adapting to recent changes as the court and indeed the nation entered a new phase of maturity as appeals to the Privy Council had been abolished in 1949 by 13 Geo IV c 37, whereby the SCC became the final court of appeal for all civil and criminal matters. In the same 1949 Act the number of justices at the SCC had been increased from seven to nine. Those nine justices in 1952 were:

Chief Justice: Thibaudeau Rinfret
Puisine Justices:
Patrick Kerwin
Robert Taschereau
Ivan Cleveland Rand
Roy Lindsay Kellock
James Wilfred Estey
Charles Holland Locke
John Robert Cartwright
Joseph Honoré Gérald Fauteux

1952 being a Statute Revision Year the Supreme Court also had a shiny new act, R.S.C. 1952 c 259 which consolidated the changes that had occurred in 1949.

Some notable cases from 1952 include:
Parent v. Lapointe, [1952] 1 SCR 376 (Automobile Negligence cited well over 700 times).

P.E.I. Potato Marketing Board v. Willis, [1952] 2 SCR 392 (Regulation of Interprovincial Trade)

C.P.R. v. A.G. for Saskatchewan, [1952] 2 SCR 231 (Mineral Taxation)

Kissick v. The King, [1952] 1 SCR 343 (Criminal Evidence)

Kissick was one of the last cases to have King in the style of cause at the SCC but not the last which was a tie on February 5, 1952: The King v. Assessors of Sunny Brae (Town), [1952] 2 SCR 76 regarding taxation and Grossman et al. v. The King, [1952] 1 SCR 571 on the duty of the crown to make airports safe. The first case to have Queen in the style of cause was: Malanik v. The Queen, [1952] 2 SCR 335 on May 12, 1952, a criminal appeal.

The beginning of v.1 of the SCR (or Canada Law Reports Supreme Court) 1952 has an “in memoriam” for the late King and a pledge of allegiance to the new Queen:

In Memoriam

In Memoriam

Comments are closed.