Good Judgment, based upon the author's experience as a lawyer, law professor, and judge, explores the role of the judge and the art of judging. Engaging with the American, English, and Commonwealth literature on the role of the judge in the common law tradition, Good Judgment addresses the following questions: What exactly do judges do? What is properly within their role and what falls outside? How do judges approach their decision-making task?In an attempt to exp...

My Life in the Law is a rich, personal reflection on Robert J. Sharpe’s long, varied, and influential career as a lawyer, scholar, and judge.After giving an account of his early life and education, Sharpe examines his time as a law student in the late 1960s, an era when great emphasis was put upon formalistic legal doctrine, heavily influenced by English law. As a legal academic in the 1970s up until the 1990s, Sharpe participated in Canadian law’s emergence from the shadow...

When Brian Dickson was appointed in 1973, the Supreme Court of Canada was preoccupied with run-of-the-mill disputes. By the time he retired as Chief Justice of Canada in 1990, the Court had become a major national institution, very much in the public eye. The Court's decisions, reforming large areas of private and public law under the Charter of Rights, were the subject of intense public interest and concern.Brian Dickson played a leading role in this transformation. Engaging and i...