| Summary: | This thesis seeks to explain how civil procedure legislation enacted in
British Columbia in the 1870s was motivated by a desire to make the province's
county courts conform to the requirements of an expanding commercial
community. The county courts system had evolved in the colonial period to
serve the limited legal needs of a sparsely populated country. It was modeled
on English county courts, but local circumstances had required that a number of
compromises be made in the administration of justice. The most significant
deviations from the English model were that administrators appointed lay
magistrates to serve the courts and they endowed the court with a very high
jurisdictional limit in civil cases. Despite public agitation in the late 1860s to
formalize court procedure no significant changes were made to the courts when
British Columbia entered Confederation in 1871. In the first years of the new
province members of the legislative assembly championed the cause of civil
procedure reform in the courts. In contrast, the judiciary resisted change to this
government institution and to a way of life that they had established in the
colonial era.
This study is based on an extensive examination of literary sources as well
as a quantitative analysis of court records. One goal of the research was to
discover the urgency of court reform in the post-Confederation period. Recent
British Columbia legal historiography has suggested that would-be court
reformers tried to implement changes that were premature. The quantitative
research presented in this study supports the argument of reformers that change
was required for the better administration of justice. At Confederation the extant
courts system was stifling economic development. In response materialist,
progress-minded legislators adopted court reform initiatives instituted in
contemporary English common law courts to facilitate commercial expansion. In
conclusion, this examination of court reform suggests that the rationalization of
the county courts system advanced the development of capitalist social relations
in British Columbia. === Arts, Faculty of === History, Department of === Graduate
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