The Fiercest Debate

From its earliest days the Law Society of Upper Canada adhered to the traditions of English legal practice and education. In the 1930s and 1940s, however, some of the most cherished of those traditions were challenged in a bitter debate about the nature of legal education in Ontario. This book tells the story of that debate and one of its leading participants, Cecil Augustus Wright.

'Caesar' Wright was one of the first Canadian legal academics to attend Harvard Law School, and his Harvard background played a significant role in the development of his position in the controversy over legal education. The established lawyers who served as benchers of the law society insisted that legal training should be principally a matter of practical experience. Wright, who sought to bring American notions of the roles of lawyers and legal academic to Ontario, tried unsuccessfully to persuade the benchers that the job of educating young lawyers should be transferred to the universities. Decades of contention culminated in 1949 with Wright's dramatic resignation from Osgoode Hall Law School and his appointment as dean of the newly created Faculty of Law at the University of Toronto.

The debate between the benchers of the law society and the proponents of academic legal education touched the lives of many prominent lawyers and law professors, and its resolution permanently changed the nature of legal education in Ontario. Ian Kyer and Jerome Bickenbach offer an account of the conflict and a portrait of the energetic and often acerbic figure who has been called Canada's most influential law teacher.