Reckoning with Racism: Police, Judges, and the RDS Case

A history of the first case brought against systemic anti-Black racism in Canada.
 
The Canadian Supreme Court considered a complaint against judicial racial bias for the first time in 1997. The nation’s first Black woman justice, Corrine Sparks, heard the initial case: a white Halifax officer arrested a Black teenager, placed him in a choke-hold, and charged him with assaulting an officer and resisting arrest. In acquitting the teen, Sparks wrote that police often overreacted toward young people of color. A debate ensued about the tradition that the legal system was not racist in its ordinary course. Reckoning with Racism is a thorough study of the case, its debate, and its lasting effects on the Canadian legal system.

Constance Backhouse is distinguished university professor of law at the University of Ottawa. She has written numerous prize-winning books, including Colour-Coded: A Legal History of Racism in Canada, 1900–1950.