After graduating from McMaster University and the University of Wisconsin at Madison, Peter Lawson attended Oxford University where he was a Commonwealth Scholar. Upon receiving his doctorate, Peter spent several years teaching, first at McMaster, then at the University of Toronto.

As a teacher and researcher, Peter specialized in the history of crime and the criminal law. In part as a result, he enrolled in the Faculty of Law at the University of Toronto. After graduation, and following his call to the Ontario Bar, Peter established a legal research practice. He has worked as an independent research lawyer ever since, serving the research needs of Ontario lawyers.

Published articles:

1.     Regular column, “An Eye on the Courts,” appearing in the HLA Journal

2.     The Rule Against “In Terrorem Conditions”: What Is It? Where Did It Come From? Do We Really Need It? (2006) 25 Estates, Trusts and Pensions Journal, 71-94.

This article won the OBA’s Widdifield Award as the best article published in the Estates, Trusts and Pensions Journal in that year.

3.     “Legal Research: Doing it Right—And Recovering Your Costs”, (Winter, 2004) The Litigator, 27.

4.     Review of G.H.L. Fridman, The Law of Contract in Canada (4th ed.) and S.M. Waddams, The Law of Contracts (4th ed.), The Hamilton Lawyer, October 2000.

5.     “The Devolution of Partnership Property: A Legal Conundrum Revisited, ” (2000) 19 Estates, Trusts and Pensions Review 343-362.

6.     Chair of Plenary Session on Employment Law at the Canadian Association of Law Libraries, June 3, 1998.

7.     “Patriarchy, Crime and the Courts: The Criminality of Women in Late Tudor and Early Stuart England,” in Greg T. Smith, Allyson May and Simon Devereaux, eds., Criminal Justice in the Old World and the New (Toronto: University of Toronto Centre of Criminology, 1998), 16-57.

8.     “Litigating Same Sex Spousal Benefits: Employers Take Note”, The Hamilton Lawyer, January 1997.

9.     “Review of Stacey Ball, Canadian Employment Law, The Hamilton Lawyer, September 1996.

10.  “Fox v. Fox Estate: Just How Absolute Is An Executor’s ‘Absolute Discretion’”, The Hamilton Lawyer, July 1996.

11.  “Reconsidering the Admissibility of Expert Evidence: The Implications of R. v. Mohan”, The Hamilton Lawyer, April 1995.

12.  “Legal Research”, Presentation to the Institute of Law Clerks of Ontario, Seminar on Legal Research, March 30, 1996.

13.  The Birth of the Prison in England”, lecture delivered at the 1995 Bridge Week on Legal History at the Faculty of Law, University of Toronto.

14.  Review of Cynthia Herrup’s The Common Peace, (1989) 24 Canadian Journal of History  236-37.

15.  “Lawless Juries: The Composition and Behaviour of Hertfordshire Juries, 1573-1624”, in J.S. Cockburn and T.A. Green, eds. Twelve Good Men and True. The Criminal Trial Jury in England, 1200-1800  (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1988), 117-157.

16.  “Property Crime and Hard Times in England, 1559-1624” (1986) 4 Law and History Review 95-127.