William Ralph Meredith - Judicial Career

Judicial Career

His dispute with the Catholic Church led to another embarrassing electoral defeat, and the government in Ottawa now viewed him as a "governmental impossibility" in Ontario, and decided it might be more prudent to put Meredith in a position which enabled him to put his real talents to work. In 1894, he retired from politics and accepted the position of Chief Justice of the Common Pleas and of the Ontario High Court of Justice, and was knighted in that capacity two years later. In 1913, he was succeeded by one of his brothers, Richard Martin Meredith, and appointed Chief Justice of the Ontario Court of Appeal. On the reorganization of the Ontario judiciary he was made Chief Justice of Ontario, in which office he died.

Meredith stuck rigidly to the doctrine of applying precedents, avoiding narrow or restrictive interpretations of the law. In his obituary, Toronto City Solicitor William Johnston praised him for being 'one of the best versed judges in Municipal law.' Occasionally he found himself presiding over cases in which two of his brothers (Edmund and Richard) stood before him. In 1913, the Toronto World reported,

As a family the Merediths, whilst agreeable enough to those they meet have always held themselves aloof and have mixed little in society. In Sir William this characteristic is noticeable. He is a man with very few intimates. He has climbed to his present eminence by sheer ability, not by means of wirepulling. Kindly at heart and sympathetic, he is yet so sharp-witted that he cannot resist an occasional biting word or innuendo, a habit which has gained him not a few enemies. On the bench he is severe, demanding much from those who appear before him. He is in effect a judicial autocrat. In private life on the other hand he can be one of the most delightful of conversationalists with a rich store of knowledge and anecdote.