Law, Rhetoric, and Irony in the Formation of Canadian Civil Culture.

• Author: Klinger, Geoffrey
• Position: Book Review

Law, Rhetoric, and Irony in the Formation of Canadian Civil Culture. By Michael Dorland and Maurice Charland. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2002; pp. xiv +359. $65.00; $35.00 paper.

In his contribution to The Rhetoric of the Human Sciences (1987), James Boyd White writes:

[L]aw is most usefully seen not, as it normally is by academics and philosophers, as a system of rules, but as a branch of rhetoric; and that rhetoric, of which law is a species, is most usefully seen not, as it normally is, either as a failed science or as the art of persuasion, but as the central art by which community and culture are established, maintained, and transformed. (298)

It was James Boyd White's approach to the law that first came to mind upon reading Michael Dorland and Maurice Charland's Law, Rhetoric, and Irony in the Formation of Canadian Civil Culture. Most significant in comparison is the successful attempt to recast law as a primary, perhaps the primary, cultural artifact and determinant. Indeed, in the acknowledgments of their book, the authors note that their project was largely the result of a conclusion that cultural studies can and should be interested in legal theory, practice, and history, especially in the context of Canada. The motivation seemed to be a desire to recast and critically engage the law and its part in the constitution of Canadian civil culture.

The authors accomplish their ends in a broad and engaging account of Canadian history. What emerges is a carefully crafted tapestry of historical examples, and theoretical arguments. While the authors claim and demonstrate that they have done significant work in the history of Canada, this study transcends those boundaries and becomes an important touchstone for the often unexamined role that law plays in determining the ground rules for cultures around the world. The authors recognize the broader implications of their work, as well: "[these conditions are] dimensions of larger sets of processes--call them postcolonialism, globalization, or postmodernism--of sociological transformation and symbolic breakdown that have come to affect all nations, all imagined communities, in various ways and to varying degrees" (18).

The authors concern themselves with negotiating "discursive waves" in Canada's complex legal history (4). At once, though, it becomes obvious that the authors are concerned with more than just the law. In their "Envoi," the authors explore the implications of art as a...