Political scientist's new book traces the career of Justice Emmett Hall
BY RACHELLE COOPER
Even though he died almost 10 years ago at the age of 97, Justice Emmett Hall, U of G's second chancellor and the subject of a new biography by retired political science professor Fred Vaughan, has recently been praised in the national newspapers.
Hall is earning applause for being the lone voice of dissent in 1967 when the Supreme Court of Canada reconsidered Steven Truscott's 1959 murder conviction. After 14-year-old Truscott was sentenced to death for murdering 12-year-old Lynne Harper, a 1966 book by Isabel Lebourdais championed Truscott's innocence, which prompted the government to refer the case to the Supreme Court of Canada for another look. The court confirmed the jury's verdict by an 8-to-1 majority. Hall was the lone dissenter.
Last month, Truscott's lawyers were hoping there would be a new trial, something Hall also called for in 1967, but it was decided that Truscott's case will instead be reviewed once again, this time by the Ontario Court of Appeal.
Vaughan, who taught political science at Guelph from 1967 to 1996, first requested an interview with Hall in 1969 and followed his career and life closely, collecting material for Aggressive in Pursuit: The Life of Justice Emmett Hall, which was released this month.
“I've been a reader of biographies for many years, and my interest in teaching at the University was in the area of constitutional law and judiciary,” says Vaughan. “So I thought it would be interesting to combine my interests in law and biography and write a judicial biography.”
Now living in Nova Scotia, he recently returned to Guelph to present a copy of his book to Truscott, who Vaughan says has never forgotten the support he received from Hall.
“It's still a mystery to me today why Emmett Hall stood alone in dissent,” says Vaughan. “But it was, I think, his incredible penetration into the procedures of the trial. He went through the transcript of that trial with an attention to detail that was so characteristic of him. He came up with a number of things that told him the trial that took place in Goderich in 1959 was a ‘bad trial.' That's the term he used.”
Implied in Hall's judgment of the case is a severe criticism of Truscott's original lawyers, says Vaughan.
“They didn't do the kind of work Hall would have done as a lawyer, and he wouldn't have allowed the judge to get away with what he did in the initial trial. The big thing to understand about Hall's style of judging was that he looked on himself, especially in criminal cases, as an accused person's last defence lawyer available. Some judges don't believe the role of the judge is to be an advocate of the accused, but that's the way Hall thought of it.”
His decision in the Truscott appeal case was not the only time Hall was controversial, says Vaughan, who called his book Aggressive in Pursuit because Hall was known for being aggressive.
“In court, he frequently had to be called to order by the judge. When he conducted his health services commission, he went nose to nose with the doctors and other people who appeared before the committee.”
He may have been harsh with doctors as chair of the Royal Commission on Health Services in Canada in the 1960s, but Hall's recommendations caused him to be known as the father of medicare. The 1964 Hall Report recommended a joint federal/provincial system that would cover the costs of preventive health-care services and hospital care for all Canadians. Vaughan dedicates a chapter in his book to Hall's role in developing medicare.
He also dedicates a chapter to Hall's role as chair of the provincial committee on the Ontario education system, but is less enthusiastic about the recommendations in the resulting 1969 Hall-Dennis Report.
“It's always very difficult to understand how Emmett Hall could have lent his name to that dreadful mess,” says Vaughan. “It led to progressive education in schools that produced a lot of students who couldn't write when they came to university.”
The book follows Hall's long career, starting with his early days as a Saskatchewan lawyer. Hall practised law in Saskatoon until 1957, when he became chief justice of the Court of Queen's Bench of Saskatchewan. After serving as chief justice of Saskatchewan and of the Court of Appeal, he was appointed to the Supreme Court of Canada in 1962.
When Hall was named Guelph's second chancellor in 1971, he believed Vaughan and economics professor Jack Madden were behind the appointment because they were the only two people on campus who knew him. “But I was away as a visiting fellow at Oxford at the time,” says Vaughan, “so the news was quite a shock when I came back.”
Vaughan has dedicated the book to Bill Winegard, who was president of U of G when Hall was appointed chancellor.
Aggressive in Pursuit is the second book Vaughan has finished in retirement. The Canadian Federalist Experiment: From Defiant Monarchy to Reluctant Republic was published in 2003. He's now working on a book about the judicial philosophy of Viscount Haldane.
