Bora Laskin (October 5, 1912 – March 26, 1984) was a Canadian jurist who served as the 14th chief justice of Canada from 1973 to 1984. Laskin was appointed a puisne justice of the Supreme Court in 1970, and served on the Ontario Court of Appeal from 1965 to 1970. Before he was named to the bench, Laskin worked as a lawyer and in academia.
Early life and family
Laskin was born in Fort William, Ontario (now Thunder Bay), the son of Max Laskin and Bluma Zingel. His brother, Saul Laskin, went on to become the first mayor of Thunder Bay. His other brother, Charles, was a shirt designer and manufacturer.
Laskin married Peggy Tenenbaum. The couple had two children: John I. Laskin, who followed in his father's footsteps and became a judge at the Ontario Court of Appeal, and Barbara Laskin Plumptre. His grandson (the son of his daughter) carries on his name. His nephew John B. Laskin is a judge of the Federal Court of Appeal, having previously been a faculty member of the University of Toronto Faculty of Law and a prominent commercial litigator in Toronto.
Education
Laskin was educated as a lawyer at Osgoode Hall Law School. He initially studied at the University of Toronto, earning a Bachelor of Arts in 1933. He received the degrees of Master of Arts in 1935 and earned a Bachelor of Laws from the University of Toronto in 1936.
While at the University of Toronto, he was a member of Sigma Alpha Mu fraternity.
In 1937, he received a Master of Laws from Harvard Law School. He earned a gold medal at both the University of Toronto Law School and at Harvard Law School.
Legal career
Despite his superior academic record, Laskin, who was Jewish, was unable to find work at any law firm of note, because of the anti-Semitism that pervaded the English-Canadian legal profession at the time. As a result, his first job after graduating was writing headnotes (i.e., article synopses) for the Canadian Abridgement, a legal research tool.
In order to be called to the bar, it was required that he serve articles with a lawyer who was already a member of the bar. He had trouble finding a lawyer who would serve as his principal, because non-Jewish lawyers would not accept Jewish students. Through connections, he eventually found a young Jewish lawyer, Sam Gotfrid, who was willing to sign as his principal, but Gotfrid was himself only just starting out and could not provide Laskin with any work or salary. A year into his articles, Laskin found a non-Jewish lawyer, W.C. Davidson, who was willing to take him as an articling student, and he finished his articles with Davidson. In later years, Laskin would say that he articled with Davidson, not mentioning his initial start with Gotfrid.
Ultimately, Laskin decided to pursue his career in academia. In 1940, he was hired by the University of Toronto (the post had initially been offered to John Kenneth Macalister, who turned it down in favour of serving in the military). Laskin taught at the University of Toronto until 1965 (except for the period 1945–1949, when he taught at Osgoode Hall Law School). For 23 years he was an associate editor of Dominion Law Reports and Canadian Criminal Cases. He also wrote Canadian Constitutional Law and other legal texts. His interests were in labour law, constitutional law, and human rights. He was a founding member of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association.
Labour lawyer and arbitrator
Laskin's non-academic practice involved primarily the area of labour and employment law, where he was known to have a kind heart and worked to advance the rights of trade unions. His most significant contributions were as a grievance arbitrator, where he made one of the greatest contributions to labour jurisprudence, with many of the legal concepts he developed finding their way into the broader field of law, especially human rights law which in the early days grew largely out of disputes in the workplace.
Many of Laskin's decisions are still referenced as leading cases of Canadian labour law and the University of Toronto's Centre for the Study of Industrial Relations awards the Bora Laskin Award in Labour Law annually to two lawyers who have made an outstanding contributions to Canadian labour law (one to union-side and one to employer-side).