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William Paul McClure Kennedy (January 8, 1879 – August 12, 1963) was a Canadian historian and legal scholar.

Early life and education

Kennedy was born in Shankill, Dublin, on January 8, 1879. He graduated from Trinity College Dublin in 1900 with an MA and LittD. Kennedy came to Canada from Ireland in 1913, taking up a post at St. Francis Xavier University. He moved to the University of Toronto in 1915, teaching history, politics, and constitutional law.

Academic career

Kennedy founded the University of Toronto Law Journal in 1935, editing the journal until 1949. Also in 1935, he was named a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. In 1937, he worked as an advisor to the Rowell–Sirois Commission. Kennedy advised the attorney-general and a parliamentary committee on potential revisions to the British North America Act. He became dean of the University of Toronto Faculty of Law in 1944.

Kennedy's early constitutional scholarship argued against the concept of the nation state as applied in the Canadian context. He followed the views of Lord Acton, who stressed that states formed on the basis of national self-determination put liberty at risk. Instead, he argued in favour of what Carl Berger calls "relative autonomy" for Canada, then a dominion, within the broader British Empire.

Kennedy died on August 12, 1963, in Toronto.

Publications

This list is incomplete; you can help by adding missing items. (April 2021)

• Studies in Tudor History. Toronto; London: Copp Clark Co; Constable. 1916. OCLC 252242854.
• The Constitution of Canada: An Introduction to Its Development and Law. London: Oxford University Press. 1922. OCLC 697697019.
• Essays in Constitutional Law. Humphrey Sumner Milford; Oxford University Press. 1934. OCLC 251183870.

Further reading

• Friedland, Martin L. (September 7, 2020). Searching for W.P.M. Kennedy: The Biography of an Enigma. University of Toronto Press. doi:10.3138/9781487533915. ISBN 978-1-4875-3391-5. S2CID 226740332.
• Risk, R. C. B. (1998). "The Many Minds of W. P. M. Kennedy". University of Toronto Law Journal. 48 (3): 353–386. doi:10.2307/826046. JSTOR 826046.

References

1. ^ Taylor, M. Brook (December 24, 2015). "William Paul McClure Kennedy". The Canadian Encyclopedia. Retrieved April 29, 2021.
2. ^ "William Paul McClure Kennedy 1879–1963". University of Toronto Law Journal. 15 (2): 255–258. 1964. ISSN 0042-0220. JSTOR 825282.
3. "William Kennedy, Expert in Constitutional Law, Dies". The Star-Phoenix. The Canadian Press. August 13, 1963. p. 18.
4. Berger, Carl (1986). The Writing of Canadian History: Aspects of English-Canadian Historical Writing Since 1900 (2nd ed.). University of Toronto Press. pp. 40–41. OCLC 755191515.
5. Merriman, Roger B. (October 1916). "Review of Studies in Tudor History". The American Historical Review. doi:10.1086/ahr/22.1.142. ISSN 1937-5239.
6. D., J. (1916). "Review of Studies in Tudor History". Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review. 5 (18): 296–298. ISSN 0039-3495. JSTOR 25701005.
7. de Kerallain, René (1924). "Review of The Constitution of Canada". Revue historique (in French). 146 (1): 94–96. ISSN 0035-3264. JSTOR 40942379.
8. Martin, Chester (1923). "Review of The Constitution of Canada". Canadian Historical Review. 4 (2): 162–170. Project MUSE 626706.
9. Keith, Arthur Berriedale (July 1935). "Review of Essays in Constitutional Law". International Affairs. doi:10.2307/2603493. ISSN 1468-2346. JSTOR 2603493.
10. Elliott, W. Y. (October 1935). "Review of Essays in Constitutional Law". American Political Science Review. 29 (5): 890–891. doi:10.2307/1947241. ISSN 0003-0554. JSTOR 1947241. S2CID 148013944.

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