A new book on the study of law and politics...

I was delighted to see my latest book, a collection of papers co-edited with my friend Kate Puddister, has been published by the University of Toronto Press. Disciplinary Divides in the Study of Law and Politics features 19 chapters by prominent legal scholars and political scientists exploring how academics understand and study a wide range of issues, including: the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, immigration, elections, constitutional change, Indigenous rights, administrative law, the relationship between courts and legislatures, federalism, judicial appointments, expert witnesses, government lawyers, and the reference power, among other things.

The theme of the book is how legal scholars (i.e. law professors) and political scientists tend to understand these things differently, both in the ways they study them (methodology) and in their general normative viewpoints (how they think things ought to work).

And so while some of the chapters are geared very much to examining different patterns and trends in things like academic scholarship and interdisciplinarity, these chapters and the rest of the book are about so much more than scholarly navel-gazing. The book exposes our collective understanding of how the aforementioned topics and issues have evolved, where we stand today, and how pressing contemporary problems and challenges might be addressed in the future.

The book is organized into three parts. The chapters in Part I examine different aspects of this ‘disciplinary divide.’ Part II features chapters by political scientists followed by a legal scholar’s response (and vice versa). (My own chapter examines how political scientists contribute to the study of constitutional amendment, in response to an excellent chapter by Richard Albert). Finally, Part III features chapters co-authored by a legal scholar and a political scientist together.

The book also features a Foreword by Supreme Court of Canada Justice Malcolm Rowe. It is dedicated to the late Peter H. Russell, a true pioneer of the ‘law and politics’ subfield.

This is my 9th book, my 6th edited collection, and my 2nd time working with Kate Puddister, a brilliant political scientist at the University of Guelph. It was a pleasure to put together, and I’m grateful to all the wonderful contributors. If you’re interested in questions of law, or the constitution, I encourage you to grab a copy.