Courts of Domestic Relations: A Study of Early Twentieth Century Judicial Reform in Canada (From Windsor Yearbook of Access to Justice, V 6, P 36-60, 1988, William A. Bogart, ed.)

• NCJ Number: 109500
• Author(s): J G Snell
• Date Published: 1988
• Length: 25 pages
• Sale Source: University of Windsor Press
• Language: English
• Country: Canada
• Note: An abstract in French is provided. An earlier version of this paper was presented as one of the 1985 Osgoode Society Lectures in Legal History at the University of Windsor and at Queen's University.

Annotation

The limited character of the early development of domestic relations courts in Canada suggests that Canadian decisionmakers were not yet ready to move fully into this new phase of the role of courts and judicial officers.

Abstract

In the early 20th century in Canada and elsewhere, an amalgam of social reformers and members of the rising new social work profession, with the assistance of sympathetic jurists and legal thinkers, struggled to establish a new means of controlling and structuring intrafamilial behavior. Courts of domestic relations slowly began to be founded, dominated by nonjudicial personnel and imbuded with a philosophy of using the power and stature of these courts to support and enforce 'acceptable' familial conduct. There continued to be a heavy reliance on the power of the law to enforce normative behaviors rather than on the more direct activities of agents of the law. The domestic relations courts represent a transition to a more active role for state institutions and officers. By the end of the 1930's, depression, and the start of World War II, that transition was still underway, awaiting completion in the 1960's. 95 footnotes. (Author abstract modified)