Canadian Lawyer

an oFFicial history in the makinG: the way thinGs were T he Nova Scotia Barristers' Society is taking a 200-year step back in time. The country's second oldest barristers' society has commissioned an official history to celebrate its bicentenary. The book itself will also make history: It will be the first of its kind in Atlantic Canada. The historic initiative, says NSBS executive director Darrel Pink, is important. "We won't know how important until we see [the finished manuscript]. In doing this, my hope is that we will be thinking about what are important documents that future generations may be interested in." Independent historian Barry Cahill has spent the last two years working on the society's history from 1811 to 2005, when a new Legal Profession Act became law in Nova Scotia. The results of his efforts will be unveiled for the first time to NSBS at the end of the year. Before publication, in whatever form that may take, a group of academic peers will review the manuscript. "It's a high-level treatment," says Cahill, who lives in Halifax. The first act to regulate the legal profession in Nova Scotia was passed in 1811, making the province only the second in the country after Ontario to have such legislation. It would be another 14 years, however, before the barristers' society would come into existence and seven more decades before that society would become the profession's regulator. "Before that," notes Cahill, "it was regulated by the legislature and the courts." One of the major themes of the book — which is expected to be hundreds of pages — is how the barristers' society acquired the right to regulate. "It was a long struggle and many lawyers were opposed to this," notes Cahill. "The government imposed it because it was the way things were being done at the time whether in England or Ontario." Uncovering how things were done is challenging. "We have been benignly neglectful of preserving our history," notes Pink, who has himself made his- tory as the longest-serving head of a barristers' society in Canada. That oversight has been rectified moving forward. The society has negotiated an agreement with the Nova Scotia Archives to preserve important documents including regulatory decisions. What appears to be unrecoverable to a great extent is the province's legal history. "That has not been terribly well-preserved in Nova Scotia," says Pink. "The profession really has lost a lot of its history, and it was a very different history." Cahill is turning to other reputable accounts, such as local newspapers, to fill in the blanks as they relate to the society's past. These accounts include fun items such as a rhyming poem that appeared in the Evening Mail in 1988 entitled "The Young Barrister." It ends with these lines: "So, in dealing with corporations, if you have a chance to sue 'm/Be sure and apply unsparingly the maxim — 'soc et tuem!'" Some things, it appears, never change. — Dm CeNtRAL Aiming for the moon C anadian mining lawyers may have their sights set on how to best exploit the country's rich potash, coal, gold, and iron ore reserves, but in a university research office in Montreal the lens is focused on the legal implications of prospecting the moon and other celestial bodies. "It is not science fiction anymore," says lawyer Yaw Nyampong, the newly appointed executive director of the Centre for Research in Air and Space Law. The centre is the research and educational outreach arm of McGill University's Institute of Air and Space Law, which lays claim to offering the most advanced and extensive graduate program in air and space law in the world. Earlier this year, it completed a study for the Canadian Space Agency, which wanted to assess the current state of affairs of how ready companies and individuals are to really engage in exploration of the moon and other celestial bodies, says Nyampong. "What position Canada should adopt when a company shows up one day and requests permission to go to the moon and mine platinum?" Researchers reviewed the latest developments on the question around the world and international law that governs resource exploitation on the moon and other celestial bodies. Serving as an entry point was the The Agreement Governing the Activities of States on the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies (a.k.a. The Moon Treaty), an agreement drafted more than three decades ago but ratified by few states since. "Our conclusion is that the law is stuck in 1979 with the adoption of the Moon Treaty, but that the Moon Treaty provides a very solid framework for developing a regime that would govern resource exploitation," says Nyampong. "The Moon Treaty says that when exploitation of moon and other resources is about yes, it's a real thing. check out the to become feasible states should moon treaty here: unoosa.org/oosa/ come together and agree to a spaceLaw/moon.html. continued on page 8 www.CANADIAN L a w ye r m a g . c o m November/December 2013 7

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