Law, Debt, and Merchant Power

James Muir is an associate professor in the Department of History and Classics as well as the Faculty of Law at the University of Alberta.

‘At the higher methodological level, the work both fascinates and provokes… Muir’s book is an interesting, original, and important work, part of the new wave of regional scholarship that integrates greater Nova Scotia into the history of the eighteenth-century British Atlantic.’- Barry Cahill (Acadiensis February 2017) ‘James Muir presents an articulate, nuanced approach to the development of civil procedure in Canada… He has collected an impressive amount of historical data in order to reconstruct patterns of litigation in eighteenth-century Halifax.’- Ashton Butler (Saskatchewan Law Review vol 80:2017) "This is the 103rd book published by the Osgoode Society for Legal History since 1981, part of a sustained effort to understand the law, the courts, and practitioners over the whole of Canadian history from many perspectives."- Douglas McCalla, University of Guelph (Canadian Business History Association Newlsetter, July 2018)

• Chapter 1: Introduction Chapter 2: Halifax, a community of litigants Chapter 3: Initiating Actions Chapter 4: Avoiding Trial Chapter 5: Going to Trial Chapter 6: Ending the Action Chapter 7: Appeals and Other Courts Chapter 8: Conclusion Appendix 1: Sources and Methods Appendix 2: Interpreting Occupational and Status Data Bibliography