Most popular law books in 2025
The 2026 LawMatters’ grants went out this week, with a brand-new Law Books for Libraries list and Law Books for Kids list to assist you in your purchasing decisions – you can find them both on our website. Want to buy a book that’s not on the list or use your grant funding to support print-related programming in your library? Reach out to us and we’ll be happy to help!
Make sure to also check out our updated Retention and Weeding list, which can help you keep your print legal materials up to date (and help make some room on the shelf!).
In anticipation of your upcoming book hauls, we wanted to look back at the most popular legal books purchased by BC public libraries in 2025.
Our most popular topics in 2025 were:
- Children & Youth, which includes our ever-popular Law Books for Kids titles
- Indigenous legal topics
- The Legal System, which features titles to help your patrons understand and navigate the legal system in BC and Canada
- Criminal law
- Rights and Social Justice, featuring titles discussing human rights, discrimination, and equity.
Our top Kids books were a tie between:
- The Kids’ Book of Family Changes: this book helps children understand what is happening during divorce and separation.
- You can be an Activist: How to Use Your Strengths and Passions to Make a Difference: this book helps children and youth learn how to be activists, from choosing a cause to completing specific tasks and leading a team.
And our top five purchased titles overall:
- The Canadian People: How We Became Who We Are, by Barry Lipson: In this book, the author traces how Canadian courts and governments have altered Canadian history, changing the country from a British colony to an ethnically diverse nation.
- Rethinking Free Speech, by Peter Ives: Drawing on philosophy and everyday examples, this book provides a framework for readers to understand debates around free speech, with particular attention paid to academic freedom and social media.
- Elections in Canada: People, Players, and Processes, edited by Tamara Small and Royce Koop: This book provides a comprehensive overview of Canadian electoral processes, including key institutional building blocks, past political campaigns, and voter demographics and participation.
- The Same, Only Different: Understanding Canada and the United States, by Gregory J. Inwood and Robert W. Speel: This book provides a comparative analysis of Canada and the United States, including political, economic, cultural, and international relations.
- Dispatches from the Threshold: Tenant Powers in Times of Crisis, edited by Rae Baker and Alexander Ferrer: In this book, activists, scholars, and legal practitioners involved in tenant organizing provide real-life stories housing insecurity and the fight for tenant rights across Canada and abroad.