This is the second of three volumes in an important collection that recounts the sweeping history of law in Canada. The period covered in this volume witnessed both continuity and change in the relationships among law, society, Indigenous peoples, and white settlers.

The authors explore how law was as important to the building of a new urban industrial nation as it had been to the establishment of colonies of agricultural settlement and resource exploitation. The book addresses the most important developments in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries, including legal pluralism and the co-existence of European and Indigenous law. It pays particular attention to the Metis and the Red River Resistance, the Indian Act, and the origins and expansion of residential schools in Canada.

The book is divided into four parts: the law and legal institutions; Indigenous peoples and Dominion law; capital, labour, and criminal justice; and those less favoured by the law. A History of Law in Canada examines law as a dynamic process, shaped by and affecting other histories over the long term.