Learning federalism: The experience of New Brunswick's 19th century judges

This is a study of how New Brunswick judges interpreted the BNA Act in the first decades of Confederation. Particular attention is paid to The Queen v. Chandler (1869), to City of Fredericton v. The Queen (1979), and to the opinions of William Johnstone Ritchie in early constitutional cases of the Supreme Court of Canada. It concludes that constitutional adjudication in New Brunswick: opened deep fault lines in the province's legal culture on the relationship between legislatures and courts and the definition of constitutional law; produced a clash of constitutional visions based on different understandings of how confederation made federalism and the English constitution consistent; revealed the influence of a provincial rights understanding of confederation that linked federalism and constitutional interpretation to the protection of individual rights; produced indigenous understandings of the BNA Act that anticipated the achievements of provincial rights in Privy Council cases.