Description Carrie M Best

Written by Carrie M Best on 13 March 1969. 

Human Rights

Carrie Best Studies Law

By Carrie M Best

Some weeks ago a person whom I had never met and who is a newcomer to this area gave me a low book – a mammoth volume of several hundred pages and suggested I should read it.

Since then I have been burning the midnight oil or rather subsidizing Edison in an attempt to gain some insight into the [implicated] function of the law as it relates to Human Rights.

It is a most fascinating study.

I was in the midst of the study of Municipal Laws, etc. when “The People” ---.  This is the recently published Integration Press newspaper published in Halifax and in a heading titled “Law Reform Neglected in Nova Scotia” was an article by Keith Jobson, Faculty of Law, Dalhousie Law School, Halifax.  It reads:

The Law is an ass, Dickens wrote of his time and similar feelings doubtless could be expressed about --many of our other laws.  We still imprison people for failing to pay debts or taxes and justify it by legal hairsplitting and calling it imprisonment for wilful refusal to obey a court order to pay.

I read with much interest Mr Jobson’s comment on will.  Captioned “Shrouded Mystery” it reads –

“Even the laws related to will is incrusted in mysteries of hundreds of years of old English case law.”

Outmoded

Similarly sales of goods are governed by outmoded rules designed originally to serve the commercial interests of large English traders, now applied to the purchase of a fridge or stove from the corner hardware store, the old rules work [an] injustice.

Questions

Stressing the need of modernization Mr Jobson asks

“In a year marked by social unrest and shocking invasion of human dignity what excuse can the government have for failing to introduce bills abolishing imprisonment for debt or reform of the bail system?”

“What excuse for continued delay in introducing a legal aid scheme: for neglecting to reform the landlord tenant laws; for failing to introduce a new Expropriation Act to ensure justice when a man’s home is taken over by the state or for neglecting reform of the Bills of Sales Act the Wills Act and many others.”

Mr Jobson recommends that a permanent Law Reform Commission with adequate staff be appointed to do the job now being done by the Attorney General’s department.  Such bodies in Alberta and Ontario as well as in many other areas are recognized now as a necessary part of modern society.

In conclusion Mr Jobson writes: The question affects not only the matter of justice but the matter of economic development for what industry will want to settle in a province saddled with outdated laws?

If Keith Jobson of the Faculty of Law, Dalhousie University is baffled, it isn’t likely that I will find my answers in this massive volume, but it is still the most exciting and informative volume and I’ve only got about five hundred more pages to go.

Carrie Mae Prevoe Best, founder of The Clarion newspaper was born in New Glasgow in 1903. She was an advocate for the fundamental rights of black, indigenous and all marginalized people.  

Carrie Best wrote a column for the Pictou Advocate under the heading Human Rights from 1968 to 1975.