Wes Pue, professor of law and chair in legal history at UBC, died April 3. A gap may exist between legal historians and historians tout court -- partly because law schools are more serious than most professional schools about doing history on an ongoing basis .Wes Pue was a serious historian. His scholarship on changing ideas of legal ethics and the nature of the practice of law, in Britain and in Canada, was groundbreaking.
He was attentive to public ethics as well. After the police riot and pepper spraying of demonstrators at the Asia-Pacific Economic Conference in Vancouver in 1997, Pue edited the collection
Pepper in Our Eyes, about the accountability of police for their political actions. He also ran the Law and Society publication series for UBC Press.
