Borderline Crime: Fugitive Criminals and the Challenge of the Border, 1819-1914

Borderline Crime: Fugitive Criminals and the Challenge of the Border, 1819-1914

Borderline Crime: Fugitive Criminals and the Challenge of the Border, 1819-1914

Borderline Crime: Fugitive Criminals and the Challenge of the Border, 1819-1914

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Overview

From 1819 to 1914, governments in northern North America struggled to deal with crime and criminals migrating across the Canadian-American border. Limited by the power of territorial sovereignty, officials were unable to simply retrieve fugitives and refugees from foreign territory.

Borderline Crime examines how law reacted to the challenge of the border in British North America and post-Confederation Canada. For nearly a century, officials ranging from high court judges to local police officers embraced the ethos of transnational enforcement of criminal law. By focusing on common criminals, escaped slaves, and political refugees, Miller reveals a period of legal genesis where both formal and informal legal regimes were established across northern North America and around the world to extradite and abduct fugitives. Miller also reveals how the law remained confused, amorphous, and often ineffectual at confronting the threat of the border to the rule of law. This engrossing history will be of interest to legal, political, and intellectual historians alike.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781487501273
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
Publication date: 10/11/2016
Series: Osgoode Society for Canadian Legal History
Pages: 304
Product dimensions: 5.90(w) x 9.20(h) x 0.70(d)
Age Range: 18 Years

About the Author

Bradley Miller is an assistant professor in the Department History at the University of British Columbia, where he holds the Keenleyside Chair in Canada and the World.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: Introduction

Part I: Sovereign Borders and Criminal Law in Northern North America

Chapter 2: The Everyday Challenge of Sovereignty

Chapter 3: The Low and High Law of Abduction in the Border Zone

Part II: Uncertainty, Amorphousness, and Non-Law

Chapter 4: International Law and Supranational Justice in Northern North America

Chapter 5: The Non-Law of Refugees in British North America

Part III: Law Formation in the Treaty Era

Chapter 6: Civilization on the Continent: Law Reform and Imperial Power

Chapter 7: Law Formation in the Common Law World

Chapter 8: Conclusion

What People are Saying About This

Karen Knop

"Professor Miller's fascinating book makes a valuable contribution to international legal history and to our understanding of the relationships between international, British imperial and Canadian law at the high and low levels — which turn out to look remarkably different from one another — and of circuits of law within the British Empire."

Jane Errington

"Miller is not only intimately familiar with but also extensively and very appropriately uses the internal literature on extradition, asylum, and related issues as the foundation of his study. Borderline Crime is an intriguing and illuminating study."

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