Abstract
Catherine Evans argues that the Canadian state struggled to consolidate its legal control in the Northwest because of wonting capacity and, more importantly, the common law jurisprudential understanding of indigenous people.By acknowledging legal pluralism on the frontier, common law judges diminished indigenous defendants' criminal responsibility and impaired the Canadian state's attempt to impose a new criminal law on its most distant possessions.James Oldham argues that collision cases involving equestrians, pedestrians, stagecoaches, chaises, wagons, and sailing ships forced common law judges in London to create new standards of care that were appropriate for a bustling metropolitan environment.