Aggressive in Pursuit: The Life of Justice Emmett Hall.

• Author: Hussain, S. Akbar
• Position: Book Review

Frederick Vaughan, Aggressive in Pursuit: The Life of Justice Emmett Hall (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004). Pp. xv, 285.

As Emmett Hall's biographer, Frederick Vaughan is more clear-eyed curator than choreographer of deeds. Despite his personal interactions with Justice Hall in the course of researching this book, Vaughan cultivates an even-handed tenor (Preface).

This tenor underscores the humanity of the subject, for Justice Hall's humanity is indeed the subject of this book. From the very title, Vaughan highlights what he feels was Justice Hall's defining characteristic; Vaughan rejected "Aggressive in the Pursuit of Justice" as a title because he felt that this would unduly narrow the qualification (255). Justice Hall was aggressive in all that he felt strongly about; Vaughan himself fell afoul of Justice Hall's temper in the course of a conversation related to Hall's Supreme Court colleagues.

The chronology of the book is chiefly linear. This feature, while practical for a full-length portrayal of the subject, is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, the reportorial narration allows for a detailed portrait of a man who made a lasting imprint on Canadian society. On the other, the relentless stacking of incident upon incident undermines the credibility of Vaughan's interpretive passages. Vaughan claims, for instance, that Hall's childhood, spent in genteel poverty, is the reason behind Hall considering money as an important measure of success (15, 19). Such claims, though made, are left undeveloped in this book.

It is true, however, that money concerns were a motivation behind the earliest formative event in young Emmett Hall's life. Concerned about their children's ability to resist the lurid attractions of Montreal, the staunchly Catholic Hall family relocated to Saskatoon from Saint Columban, Quebec in 1910. Having full vision in only one eye, Hall was ineligible to enlist in the armed forces for the Canadian effort in the First World War. With most young men from Saskatoon overseas on ill-fated military service, Hall became one of the few law students left in town. It was in Saskatoon, while attending the University of Saskatchewan College of Law, that Hall first encountered fellow-student John Diefenbaker. Law school was the setting for a friendship that would impact Hall's life, both positively and not, in the years to come.

Given relatively more latitude than the average student-at-law, Hall gravitated immediately...