Reinventing Bankruptcy Law explodes conventional wisdom about the history of the Companies’ Creditors Arrangement Act and in its place offers the first historical account of Canada’s premier corporate restructuring statute. The book adopts a novel research approach that combines legal history, socio-legal theory, ideas from political science, and doctrinal legal analysis. Meticulously researched and multi-disciplinary, Reinventing Bankruptcy Law provides a comprehensive and concise history of CCAA law over the course of the twentieth century, framing developments within broader changes in Canadian institutions including federalism, judicial review, and statutory interpretation. Examining the influence of private parties and commercial practices on lawmaking, Virginia Torrie argues that CCAA law was shaped by the commercial needs of powerful creditors to restructure corporate borrowers, providing a compelling thesis about the dynamics of legal change in the context of corporate restructuring. Torrie exposes the errors in recent case law to devastating effect and argues that courts and the legislature have switched roles – leading to the conclusion that contemporary CCAA courts function like a modern day Court of Chancery. This book is essential reading for the Canadian insolvency community as well as those interested in Canadian institutions, legal history, and the dynamics of change.

Winner of the 2006 Fred Landon Award Osgoode Hall is a national monument and one of the architectural treasures of Canada. Of the many public buildings erected in pre-confederation Canada and British North America, it best encapsulates the diverse stylistic forces that shaped public buildings in the first half of the nineteenth century. The gated lawns, grandly Venetian rotunda, the noble dimensions of its library, handsome and ornate courtroom, portrait-lined walls and stained glass evoke a venerable dignity to which few Canadian institutions even aspire. It has been the seat of the Law Society of Upper Canada since 1832 and of several of the Superior Courts of the province for almost as long. Intended to be the focal point of the legal profession in Upper Canada it has become a symbol of the legal tradition not only in Ontario but throughout Canada and beyond.

Consumer protection law in the age of globalisation poses new challenges for policy-makers. This book highlights the difficulties of framing regulatory responses to the problem of consumers' access to justice in the new international economy. The growth of international consumer transactions in the wake of technological change and the globalisation of markets suggests that governments can no longer develop consumer protection law in isolation from the international legal arena. Leading scholars consider the broader theme of access to justice from socio-legal, law and economics perspectives. Topics include standard form contracts, the legal challenges posed by mass infections (such as mad-cow disease and CJD), ombudsman schemes, class actions, alternative dispute resolution, consumer bankruptcy, conflict of laws, and cross-border transactions. This book demonstrates that advancing and achieving access to justice for consumers proves to be a challenging, and sometimes elusive, task.