Foreword

• Author: H.W. Arthurs
• Profession: Osgoode Hall Law School York University
• Pages: 11-15

xi

FOREWORD

To the First Edition

What a twist of fate! No sooner do I appear in print deploring the lack

of ref‌lective and critical Canadian scholarship in the f‌ield of legal eth-

ics1 than I am asked to w rite an introduction to just such a book on

that very subject. Not that I ought to have been surprised. Allan Hut-

chinson’s enquiring mind a nd encyclopedic interests have t aken him

across a wide spectr um of legal subjects. He has written in a variety of

styles and for academic, professional, and lay readers; and he is vir tu-

ally incapable of writing something that is not ref‌lective and critical. I

would have predicted, however, that in turning hi s attention to legal

ethics and professional conduct, he just might have tackled one subject

too many. But I would have been wrong.

This f‌ield is a particularly daunting one for any serious schola r:

in fact, when it comes to legal ethics, the more serious t he scholar,

the more daunted she or he might be. After all, scholars need a body

of materials to work with, but in Can ada at least, decisional m aterial,

commentary, and sociological analysis are all in scarce supply in this

f‌ield. Take the Canadian Bar Association’s Code of Professional Con-

duct as a case in point. Although this was supposedly the template

for professional discipline across the country, for f‌ifty year s after its

adoption in 1920, the CBA code was a well-kept secret— never liti-

gated, virtual ly unremarked upon in the seconda ry literature, alre ady

obsolete at its inception, and positively anachroni stic by the time it was

1 “Why Canadi an Law Schools Do Not Teach Legal Eth ics” in K. Economides,

ed., Ethical Challenges to Legal Education an d Conduct (Oxford: Hart Publish ing,

1998) 105.