This paper contends that the chaos and uncertainty characteristic of the administration of the civil law in Lower Canada resulted fundamentally from the impact of the change in legal metropolis on the process of transfer and adaptation of a European legal system to a colonial setting, in a context of ethnic or national struggle for hegemony. After a brief look at the situation existing under the Quebec Act and the explanations previously offered, the paper examines the functioning of the two major mechanisms of legal adaptation or reform--legislation and jurisprudence--in order to analyse their failure to reduce judicial chaos between 1791 and 1840. Ethnic conflict combined with the change of metropolis acted to prevent any modernization of the law not inspired by English legal principles and thus effectively eliminated the possibility of legislative reform of the laws. In this context, a predominantly British judiciary became the prime avenue for anglicizing Canadian law and thereby increasing rather than decreasing the existing uncertainty and confusion in the administration of the civil law.
