New in 2020, our Guide to Mental Disorder Law in Canadian Criminal Justice is available now. Those who pre-ordered should be getting their copy any day. For anyone still looking to buy one, you can order them online here:
From my efforts to promote the book, it may be that people already know what I think of the product. That being said, here is a moment’s worth of nostalgia and indulgence around it, since this IS my blog and all.
Michael Davies and I first had the idea to write a book about mental disorder law in 2003, just weeks after we first met. He and I talked about doing this for many years and nearly had it done or half done anyway a few years later, around 2008. Life intervened in many and sundry ways and the project stalled, for over 10 years. We picked it up again in 2019. This time we added Jill Presser and Meaghan McMahon into the mix.
The work that followed among our co-authors can only be described as heroic. We applied ourselves to the task at hand with an intellectual curiosity and a camaraderie the likes of which I don’t recall elsewhere in my career. And I collaborate a LOT with a lot of people on a LOT of projects. It was a true labour of love, this book.
Every word in it is carefully weighed, thought through, discussed and approved by us all. It is a true team effort and the four of us believe in the product unreservedly. We put into it all the knowledge and wisdom gathered over our careers, specializing in this area of law. Which is complex, nuanced and full of ethical pitfalls.
There is no book out there like this one. We hope and expect it will serve practitioners on the ground to assist in mental disorder law matters every day in every imaginable way. Mostly we want it to enure to the benefit or our vulnerable clients who deserve the greatest procedural protections and utmost fairness in all litigation where their liberty is at stake. This book will help make sense of what is daunting and impenetrable to lawyers in this complicated but critically important area of criminal law.
We are enormously proud to offer it to you now. Let us know what you think!
anitaszigeti 