On
receiving the first Bora Laskin Lifetime Achievement Award in Labour Law
Given
by John Laskin
Sutton Place Hotel in Toronto at 7:00 p.m. on May 7, 2003
This
is a wonderful evening for the Laskin family. My sister Barbara and I are proud
and gratified that the University has decided to name this lifetime achievement
award after our father. My dad ordinarily felt a measure of discomfort with the
honours that came his way. He was modest; and he lived his life not by dwelling
on his past accomplishments, but instead by looking forward to the next day, to
the next challenge.
Still,
I expect he would have made an exception this evening for two reasons: one, the
subject matter of the award, labour law; and two, its recipient, Harry Arthurs.
Although
my dad genuinely loved all aspects of the law, he was passionate about two subjects:
one was constitutional law, the other was labour law.
Yet he came to labour
law accidentally. My dad firmly believed in what he called "accidentalism"
as a shaper of events. He felt that fortuitous circumstances propelled him into
the positions he was lucky enough to hold. And so it was with labour law. As my
dad saw it, luckily enough, he did graduate work at Harvard the year that the
United States Supreme Court held the National Labour Relations Act to be
constitutional. From then on labour law took off as a new subject in law school
curriculums. So when my dad returned to Toronto, encouraged by his friend Jacob
Finkelman, he seized the opportunity to get in on the ground floor of teaching
labour law.
One
of his students was Harry Arthurs. Those were the days of small law school classes.
Teachers and students got to know each other far better than they do now. Growing
up in my parents' home I heard Harry Arthurs' name often. But Harry was not a
mere student. He became a good friend of my parents. Above all he became in my
dad's eyes his protégé as a teacher of labour law and as a labour
arbitrator.
Thus,
I am honoured to have been asked to present this first Lifetime Achievement Award
to Harry Arthurs, an award he so richly deserves. For what a protégé
he became.
In
your invitation letter you were all provided with the bare details of Harry Arthurs'
professional career, which I will now read:
An
Officer of the Order of Canada, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, and a
member of the Faculty of Law at Osgoode Hall Law School, York University. He is
the author of many studies on labour law (including articles on industrial citizenship,
dependent contractors and secondary picketing), and as an arbitrator has participated
directly in the resolution of many labour disputes. He has been President of the
Canadian Civil Liberties Association, Dean of Law at Osgoode Hall Law School,
and President of York University. Currently, Professor Arthurs is a Professor
at York University, and is engaged in an examination of the developing role of
labour law in a globalized world
These
bare details of Harry Arthurs' exceptional career and his extraordinary accomplishments
are impressive enough. From law school teaching to labour arbitration to legal
education to professional regulation to university administration — wherever
he has gone, in whatever field he has entered, he has excelled.
To
this printed record add a dizzying array of publications: books, articles, conference
papers, government reports, far too numerous too mention. Add too the distinguished
Killam Prize, which Harry Arthurs received last year for his outstanding career
achievement in social sciences.
Yet
the printed record does not do justice to his enormous impact on labour law, on
the legal profession, on the lives of ordinary Canadians. For a few moments I
would like to dwell on four aspects of Harry Arthurs' contributions to labour
law, aspects that perhaps you will not find in this printed record or in his curriculum
vitae. I would like to talk about first, his contribution as a professor of labour
law; second, his contribution as a labour arbitrator; third, his contribution
as a writer; and fourth, his contribution as a shaper of today's labour law and
labour bar.
Harry
Arthurs the Law Professor
I
went to Toronto's other law school, in the middle of the City. So I did not have
the benefit of Harry Arthurs' teaching. In hindsight, I realized that I lost out
on being taught by a man who is probably Canada's most creative and imaginative
public law scholar of our generation. As the Killam Award citation stated, "he
is internationally recognized as the foremost figure in Canadian legal scholarship."
Harry
Arthurs has been not just a wonderful scholar but almost alone in his commitment
to the university and to academic life. Others with less talent have taken opportunities
outside academia. Harry, however, has stayed the course. For him the university
is life's highest calling.
And
while there, he has taught labour law to a generation of law students. He has
influenced many to pursue a career in labour law at the bar. He has attracted
people who cared about the law. Many of his former students are or have been the
leaders of the labour bar: my friends Chris Paliare, Paul Caveluzzo and George
Adams, to name but three.
Harry
Arthurs the Arbitrator
Harry
Arthurs has been universally regarded as the dean of arbitral law in Canada, the
quintessential labour arbitrator. Through his many significant decisions he committed
himself to creating a better understanding of the trade union movement. He insisted
on reasoned outcomes. He infused balance into the process and the adjudication
of workplace disputes, a balance that was sorely needed in a country that had
been historically anti union.
Balance,
however, requires me to mention the Port Arthur Ship Building case, in
which my dad's and Harry's professional lives became intertwined again, this time
in the late 1960s, and, ultimately, unhappily for both.
As
you may recall in a discharge case, Harry substituted a period of suspension for
a dismissal. His award was set aside by the High Court, restored by the Ontario
Court of Appeal and set aside once again by the Supreme Court of Canada.
It
may have been a bad time for Harry. It was an even worse time for my dad. He wrote
the decision of the Court of Appeal that was overturned by the Supreme Court of
Canada. And, in close proximity, he wrote two other public law decisions —
one a labour case, Metropolitan Life v. Union of Operating Engineers, and
the other a human rights case, Bell v. MacKay — that were also overturned
by the Supreme Court of Canada. As he said to me at the time, he didn't have a
good year.
Well,
those were the days when the Supreme Court of Canada took an aggressively interventionist
stance in labour law. Thankfully, a decade later, New Brunswick Liquor v. CUPE ushered in the period of judicial restraint. I expected all three cases would
be decided differently today.
Harry
Arthurs the Writer
Harry
Arthurs is a terrific writer, which sets him apart from many in this profession
and is, I think, an important reason why he has so influenced the development
of labour law in Canada. He has wisely used the power of the pen to probe, to
critique, to decide.
Harry's
writing reflects the fundamental principle of all great professional writing;
what you say and how you say it are intimately connected. Content cannot be divorced
from language and style.
Harry
just sent to me a marvelous piece he wrote for the Journal of Law and Society
entitled "Woe Unto You, Judges: or How Reading Frankfurter and Greene, The
Labour Injunction, Ruined Me as a Labour Lawyer and Made Me as an Academic".
Harry chose the title as a "nostalgic homage" to a book by the well
known Yale Law Professor Fred Rodell called "Woe Unto You, Lawyers",
written in 1939.
Professor
Rodell, whom Harry Arthurs calls "a fellow curmudgeon," was, like Harry,
a pretty severe critic of the legal profession. And Rodell saved his most severe
criticism for legal writing, which he considered flabby, turgid, and convoluted.
In Rodell's now notorious lines: "There are only two things wrong with almost
all legal writing. One is its style. The other is its content".
When
he wrote those lines Professor Rodell could not have been thinking of Professor
Arthurs. Harry Arthurs' writing is anything but flabby, turgid, and convoluted.
He writes vigorously, he writes clearly, and he writes concisely. He uses vibrant
nouns, and strong verbs, and he eschews the useless train of adjectives and adverbs,
the wordy phrases, the jargon that plague so much of legal — and I regret
to say — judicial writing. His content is rich; his style is eminently readable
and powerfully persuasive.
Harry
Arthurs the Shaper of Today's Labour Law and Labour Bar
Through
his teaching, through his arbitration decisions and through his writings, Harry
Arthurs has contributed greatly to the intellectual respectability labour law
now enjoys and to the skill and expertise of the labour bar. Others, of course,
have contributed. But he has done much to produce what is now probably the most
sophisticated specialty of law.
On
our court we see almost every field of law. And I doubt any field has developed
the sophistication, the intellectual rigour, the exceptional advocacy as has labour
law. Much of what we now have is attributable to Harry Arthurs.
May
I close with a few lines from a tribute my dad paid to Harry Arthurs 26 years
ago, when he stepped down as the Dean of Osgoode Hall Law School:
As
one who was one of Dean Arthurs' teachers when he himself was a law student and
as one who claims him as a friend, I join in the tributes that are being paid
to Dean Arthurs for his service to law school administration and to legal education.
It gave me great satisfaction that he chose to specialize in labour law and in
labour relations in his early teaching years, just as I did; and indeed, that
he succeeded me in some of the arbitration work in industries where I was a designted
arbitrator. What pleased me even more was that he did not persist with this work
to the exclusion of other interests but, having made a contribution in the field,
turned his abilities to a neglected field of scholarly interest, namely, the study
of the legal profession and professional responsibility. That he was able to till
that field despite his heavy administrative duties tells something of his industry
as well as of his ability.
He
has many years of service to legal scholarship to give, and can now devote himself
to it without the burdens of administration. The law teaching community, the universities
and the legal profession will all be the beneficiaries of his decision to return
to the classroom freed of administrative duties, and to return to his research
and to his writing.
My
dad accurately previewed an enormously productive period in Harry Arthurs' professional
life. Harry, I wish you many more productive years of research and writing.
On
behalf of all of us here I congratulate you on this award and I thank you for
all that you have done. All of us here, all Canadians, owe you an irredeemable
debt of gratitude.
-
John Laskin -
| 
