Like a Crown prosecutor disclosing evidence to the defence at the beginning of a trial, Fred Kaufman tells the reader in the preface to Searching for Justice: An Autobiography that a professional editor who reviewed the first draft reached less than effusively. "Published or not," she advised, “the end product will be ... archivally meaningful—and, of course, wonderful for your family for generations.” She thought it needed “opening up, a more personal stance, a less distanced tone.” The author concedes that as “a private person by nature, an observer of facts, not a communicator of feelings,” such an approach was difficult for him. Kaufman did a rewrite and his memoir “passed muster” this time, and was published by the Osgoode Society for Canadian Legal History in 2005. It has now been reissued in a paperback edition with some revisions to take account of subsequent events.
The word “resilient,” which has been so ubiquitous in public and academic discourse...
Philip Girard is the author of Bora Laskin: Bringing Law to Life (University of Toronto Press, 2005). He teaches at Osgoode Law School.
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