Subseries 15 - Two Niagaras

0.8 m of textual records

In 1990, Kent Roach, Michael Code and I commenced a project comparing the administration of justice in Ontario and New York. Michael Code had taken a year off from practice to do an LL.M. under my supervision at the Law School (see the preface to his book in file 26). We wanted to find comparable counties on either side of the border and ended up choosing Niagara County, New York and Niagara County, Ontario (file 2). We spent considerable time on either side of the border trying to find similar types of cases from past records that we could compare (file 3). Our intention was to combine a doctrinal analysis of the law with an empirical investigation of what actually happens in the two counties. Some of the various outlines of the study can be found in file 7 and in files 12-14.

We received funding from the SSHRC (files 4-6) and spent considerable time at the various institutions on either side of the border. We visited many court houses and penal institutions (file 16) and spent a number of evenings riding with the Niagara Falls Police on both sides of the border. Some of these visits are recorded in some detail in my notebooks (files 12-14). The work was part of my CIAR responsibilities and I produced a number of documents in that connection (files 28-29).

We built up a great mass of material as can be seen from the catalogue of the many file boxes that we had (file 15). A number of summer research assistants helped collect material (files 17 and 18). I ran an Advanced Criminal Law research seminar for a number of years on the Two Niagaras, often in collaboration with Kent Roach. The boxes of materials were also used by the students to assist them in preparing their papers. A collection of these papers is contained in the files (files 19-25), some of which were later published.

In the end, however, we did not produce the major book that we had intended. All three of us had intervening tasks to distract us. Kent became heavily involved in his book on constitutional remedies; Michael Code became the Assistant Deputy Attorney General; and I became heavily involved in other projects such as the judges’ study, the conflict of interest report, and my book, The Death of Old Man Rice. The material we had collected started to get out of date.

We produced a number of major articles, however. Michael Code published some articles and a book on delay (file 26). Kent and I produced several articles. Kent took the lead on an article on policing (file 30), published in the American Journal of Criminal Law, and I took the lead on an article on the use of juries in the two jurisdictions, published in the Israel Law Review and in a festschrift in honour of Peter Russell (files 31-36).

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