Review of Law for the Elephant, Law for the Beaver: Essays in the Legal History of the North American West by John McLaren, Hamar Foster and Chet Orloff

Authors

Gordan Morris Bakken, California State University, Fullerton

Date of this Version

August 1993

Comments

Published in Great Plains Research 3:2 (August 1993). Copyright © 1993 The Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska–Lincoln. Used by permission. http://www.unl.edu/plains/publications/GPR/gpr.shtml

Abstract

This collection of twelve essays displays the vitality of Western legal history and the potential for fruitful exploration of transborder legal history. John Phillip Reid's masterful survey of Western American and Canadian legal history presents both the results of research and the contours of future scholarly inquiry for generations of legal historians. David Percy and John P. S. McLaren contribute insightful comparative essays on water law and anti-Chinese activities in courts and legislatures. Other essays cover frontier criminal justice administration, aboriginal rights, jurisdiction and extraterritoriality, the cultural and legal implications of anti-Chinese discrimination, and constitution-making. This ambitious book tells us much of law and history in Western Canada and America, but more importantly summons scholars to comparative topics of great significance.