Parliamentary Magic: Sir John Thompson and the Enactment of the Criminal Code

Abstract

From the mid-sixteenth century many attempts were made to codify English criminal law against the concerted opposition of the legal profession and the bench. These efforts culminated in 1880 with the introduction in the Imperial Parliament of a criminal code bill. Like all previous initiatives, it failed. Eleven years later Sir John Thompson introduced a similar bill in the Canadian Parliament. His tactics in piloting the bill through the Commons were so effective that in the next session the Canadian Criminal Code was enacted, and Parliament, not the bench, became the focus of change in the criminal law.