The Heiress vs. The Establishment: Mrs. Campbell's Campaign for Legal Justice
by Constance Backhouse and Nancy L. Backhouse
UBC Press
In 1922, Elizabeth Bethune Campbell, a Toronto-born socialite, unearthed what she initially thought was an unsigned copy of her mother's will, designating her as the primary beneficiary of the estate. The discovery snowballed into a fourteen-year-battle with the Ontario legal establishment, as Mrs. Campbell attempted to prove that her uncle, a prominent member of Ontario's legal circle, had stolen funds from her mother's estate. In 1930, she argued her case before the Law Lords of the Privy Council in London. A non-lawyer and Canadian, with no formal education or legal training, Campbell was the first woman to ever appear before them. She won.
The Heiress vs. The Establishment brings to light Elizabeth Bethune Campbell's remarkable story. Campbell's own self-published story of her battle, Where Angels Fear to Tread, is reprinted in its entirety. It is an eloquent first-person view of intrigue and overlapping spheres of influence in the early twentieth-century legal system. Constance Backhouse and Nancy Backhouse provide extensive commentary and annotations to illuminate the context and pick up the narrative where Campbell's book leaves off.
Constance Backhouse
Constance Backhouse is a Professor of Law and University Research Chair at the University of Ottawa. She teaches in the areas of criminal law, human rights, legal history and women and the law. Professor Backhouse is the author of a number of award-winning books. Among them is Colour-Coded: A Legal History of Racism in Canada, 1900-1950 (University of Toronto Press) which won the 2002 Joseph Brant Award. Petticoats and Prejudice: Women and the Law in Nineteenth-Century Canada (Women's Press), was awarded the 1992 Willard Hurst Prize in American Legal History. Challenging Times: The Women's Movement in Canada and the United States (McGill-Queen's University Press), co-edited with David H. Flaherty, was named the 1993 "Outstanding Book on the Subject of Human Rights in the United States" by the Gustavus Myers Centre for the Study of Human Rights in the United States.
Nancy L. Backhouse
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Nancy Backhouse has been a Justice of the Ontario Superior Court since 2000. Prior to her appointment to the bench, Justice Backhouse was a family law lawyer, labour arbitrator, bencher of the Law Society and chair of the Admissions and Equity Committee of the Law Society. She was also a director of the Advocates' Society, a director of the Lawyers Professional Indemnity Company, vice-chair of the Ontario Grievance Settlement Board and part-time chair of the Police Services Board of Inquiry. Madam Justice Nancy Backhouse serves on the Superior Court of Justice in Ontario.
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