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Justice Bertha Wilson: One Woman's Difference (review)

Kim Brooks’s success at herding twenty-two scholars to the task of writing a preface and sixteen commentaries on the diverse life and work of the late Madame Justice Bertha Wilson (1923–2007) bodes well for her future as the Dean at Dalhousie Law School (renamed the Schulich School of Law in 2009). As Madame Justice Claire L’Heureux Dubé points out in the preface, these authors are very adept at illustrating how Wilson J. managed to advance her commitment to equality and justice by alternating between the “strident” jurist and that of a “balanced incrementalist.” In her introduction, Brooks summarizes several dimensions of Wilson J.’s “multi-faceted talents and career.” 1 Wilson J. was a “marvellous legal technician” who was willing and very able to take on controversy as illustrated in her many well-crafted dissents and her infamous 1990 Betcherman Lecture, “Will Women Judges Really Make a Difference?” at Osgoode Hall Law School. Wilson J. believed in the importance of social context in judicial decision making and thought it to be an important component of judicial education. She had an ability “to locate law in its social, economic, and political context” and, in so doing, exposed her passion “for the protection of the equality rights of marginalized communities and ‘ordinary citizens,’ which in turn was fuelled by her capacity for ‘entering into the skin’ of litigants.” 2 The subtitle to the book, “One Woman’s Difference” raises questions over the type of difference one judge might make and the importance of life’s experience in judicial decision making. Brooks divides the sixteen chapters into three parts. The first part of the book entitled “Foundations” contains five chapters. In Chapter 1, Angela Fernandez and Beatrice Tice, “Bertha Wilson’s Practice Years (1958–75): Establishing a Research Practice and Founding a Research Department in Canada,” provide an inside view of how Wilson J. developed a novel idea and practice—that of a research department in a law firm and later at the federal Department of Justice. Through interviews with people who worked with Wilson J. and documents provided by them, the authors provide a fascinating account of Wilson’s “behind the scenes” legal work. Although the target of much sexism, both intentional and not, her response was to “simply work hard,