Rethinking ‘the Nation’ in National Legal History: A Canadian Perspective

Abstract

In 1929, when Lorna Parsons tired of her four-year marriage to a London, Ontario tailor, she decided to seek a divorce—in Reno, Nevada. Even though Lorna's divorce was not generally recognized in Canada, obtaining it was important to her and to the hundreds, if not thousands, of Canadians who similarly sought United States divorces at a time when Canadian law was extremely restrictive. The choices of Parsons and her compatriots should be of interest to legal historians. They problematize the idea of national legal history by reminding us that law does not always remain in the tidy jurisdictional containers constructed by legal authorities and academics. National boundaries are more porous, and the nature of law itself more fluid, than we often admit.