Frederick Vaughan, Aggressive in Pursuit: The Life of Justice Emmett Hall
(Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004). Pp. xv, 285.
As Emmett Halls biographer, Frederick Vaughan is more clear-eyed curator than
choreographer of deeds. Despite his personal interactions with Justice Hall in the
course of researching this book, Vaughan cultivates an even-handed tenor (Preface).
This tenor underscores the humanity of the subject, for Justice Halls humanity is
indeed the subject of this book. From the very title, Vaughan highlights what he feels
was Justice Halls defining characteristic; Vaughan rejected Aggressive in the Pursuit
of Justice as a title because he felt that this would unduly narrow the qualification
(255). Justice Hall was aggressive in all that he felt strongly about; Vaughan himself
fell afoul of Justice Halls temper in the course of a conversation related to Halls
Supreme Court colleagues.
The chronology of the book is chiefly linear. This feature, while practical for a
full-length portrayal of the subject, is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, the
reportorial narration allows for a detailed portrait of a man who made a lasting imprint
on Canadian society. On the other, the relentless stacking of incident upon incident
undermines the credibility of Vaughans interpretive passages. Vaughan claims, for
instance, that Halls childhood, spent in genteel poverty, is the reason behind Hall
considering money as an important measure of success (15, 19). Such claims, though
made, are left undeveloped in this book.
It is true, however, that money concerns were a motivation behind the earliest
formative event in young Emmett Halls life. Concerned about their childrens ability
to resist the lurid attractions of Montreal, the staunchly Catholic Hall family relocated
to Saskatoon from Saint Columban, Quebec in 1910. Having full vision in only one
eye, Hall was ineligible to enlist in the armed forces for the Canadian effort in the
First World War. With most young men from Saskatoon overseas on ill-fated military
service, Hall became one of the few law students left in town. It was in Saskatoon,
while attending the University of Saskatchewan College of Law, that Hall first
encountered fellow-student John Diefenbaker. Law school was the setting for a
friendship that would impact Halls life, both positively and not, in the years to come.
Given relatively more latitude than the average student-at-law, Hall gravitated
immediately towards litigation. This practice, which Hall grew to love, formed his
famous attention to detail. Although it is unclear from Vaughans narration to what
extent Hall was able to choose the files he took on as a young litigator, his practice in
Saskatoon consisted chiefly of criminal and insurance cases.
In the course of this work at the Bar of Saskatchewan, Hall developed his own
lawyering style. His aggressive pursuit of his clients interest earned him a fierce
reputation and, on more than one occasion, the displeasure of the judge in the
MCGILL LAW JOURNAL / REVUE DE DROIT DE MCGILL
698
proceedings (41-43). Vaughan attempts to treat this period briskly, yet is foiled by an
eagerness to deploy all the careful research he has conducted. The result is an
overwrought narration, brimming with facts and opinions, sometimes pulling in
different directions.
[Vol. 50
In October 1957, less than four months after he became prime minister,
Diefenbaker appointed Hall Chief Justice of the Court of Queens Bench for
Saskatchewan. Five years later, Diefenbaker appointed Hall to the Supreme Court of
Canada. Vaughan unabashedly addresses Halls tendency to stroke Diefenbakers ego.
More strikingly, Vaughan meticulously catalogues a handwritten communication to
Prime Minister Diefenbaker in which Hall detailed the Supreme Courts holding in a
politically sensitive decision before that decision had been released to the parties and
the public (102). Vaughans treatment of Diefenbaker in this book reveals the latter as
a desperately ambitious man who was surprisingly small-minded and unhappy with
the successes of others (231-32, 253-54).
Halls thirty years of private practice, defending clients in criminal proceedings,
made him sensitive to matters of criminal jurisprudence (97). As a result, Hall was a
great protector of the Canadian Bill of Rights1 during his years on the Supreme Court
bench, from January 1963 to February 1973. Halls frustrations at being stymied by
stare decisis saw him clash with some of his colleagues strict-constructionist views.
In R. v. Wray,2 for instance, Halls dissent in favour of upholding maximum
procedural safeguards departed dramatically from Justice Judsons strict interpretation
of the Canada Evidence Act.3 Hall seems to have enjoyed the theatrics of public
reactions to his decisions. In his famous dissent in Reference Re Truscott, 4 Hall called
for the quashing of a criminal conviction due to, inter alia, its reliance on unreliable
circumstantial evidence (206). Halls basking in public approval was unseemly to
some of his colleagues on the bench. Justice Abbott, for instance, went as far as to say
that the Truscott dissent was an example of Halls grandstanding (205).
In Halls defence, Vaughan suggests that the formers progressive bent had simply
fused with his vision of the activist role of the judge. Clearly, Hall would have
enjoyed the activism of the Supreme Court bench rather more after the passage of the
Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms5 in 1982 (188).
Vaughan spends a great deal of his book discussing Halls participation in matters
beyond the practice of law. From early on in his career as a litigator, Hall took his
social duties as a devout Catholic and lawyer seriously. Before his appointment to the
bench, Hall served as chairman of the board of St. Pauls Hospital, on the Saskatoon
Catholic school board, and as a director of the Canadian Red Cross Society. Once on
1 S.C. 1960, c. 44, reprinted in R.S.C. 1985, App. III.
2 R. v. Wray, [1971] S.C.R. 272.
3 R.S.C. 1985, c. C-5.
4 Reference Re Truscott, [1967] S.C.R. 309.
5 Part I of the Constitution Act, 1982, being Schedule B to the Canada Act 1982 (U.K.), 1982, c. 11.
BOOK NOTE / RECENSION SIMPLE
2005]
the bench, Hall accepted work on several high-profile public enquiries such as a co-
chairmanship of an Ontario committee charged with studying the provinces public
education system (114, 143). Vaughans careful analysis reveals that Halls judicial
duties suffered as a result of some of these commitments.
699
Not surprisingly, Halls work on the Royal Commission inquiry into national
health services is treated at some length. It is here, somewhat naturally, that the
linearity of Vaughans chronology is disturbed. Hall accepted to chair the Royal
Commission while he was still Chief Justice in Saskatchewan, but carried on as chair
when he was appointed to the Supreme Court. Under Premier Tommy Douglas, The
Saskatchewan Hospitalization Act of 1946 had established a beachhead for state-
financed medicine in Canada. Despite being perceived as Diefenbakers man, Hall
produced a report in June 1964 that was deeply humanitarian in its foundations and
led the House of Commons to adopt a national health care scheme in December 1966
(137-38). Vaughan claims the origins of Halls humanitarianism lay in his Depression-
era experiences in Saskatchewan. Be that as it may, the public enquiries were heated
affairs, with the influential Canadian Medical Association (encouraged by its
American analogue) strongly against a national health care scheme (124). Further, the
discredited Diefenbaker government had since been replaced by the Liberal
government of Lester B. Pearson. The research and writing of the Hall Report was
deeply coloured by Halls own muscular fair-mindedness, and in laying the
framework for national healthcare, Hall planted the seed of an institution that has
become emblematic of all things Canadian. If only as an historical log of this
achievement, Vaughans biography is important.
Vaughans is a fair-minded, if plodding, biography that will only improbably be a
mainstream commercial success for the Osgoode Society. Happily, the aim of the
Osgoode Society is not commercial but rather to encourage research into Canadian
legal history. Aggressive in Pursuit is the most recent fruit of this initiative, and
provides an important glimpse of the evolution of the machinery of justice in Canada.
Almost more importantly, it serves as a valuable reminder of the humanity of the cogs
that make up that machinery.
Hall emerges staunchly human in this book. He lost his temper with colleagues,
was a domineering teacher, and refused to travel economy class even while on official
government business. This sort of detail, however, is the kind that endears the man to
the reader. Despite these traits, and to some extent because of them, Justice Hall was a
formidable progressive force.
S. Akbar Hussain
