Hein has just announced the release of State Statutes: A Historical Archive in HeinOnline. This new collection includes more than 1,600 volumes and nearly 2,000,000 pages of historical, superseded state statutes and offers a valuable source of information for legal researchers and scholars to understand the thinking and conditions behind the creation of the historical […]
Legal History
Go on a BibliOdyssey...
While having breakfast this morning, my eye fell upon a book that I had purchased a few years ago and has since been residing in the dusty chambers of my memory. It is titled BibliOdyssey: Archival Images from the Internet, and it is an interesting, contradictory item - it is a book of images from […]
Canon law
It's been an odd few weeks in the realm of ancient traditions, what with the discovery of Richard III and now the first papal resignation in six hundred years (and the first voluntary one since the thirteenth century, when Celestine V stepped down in 1294). As of 8pm (2pm EST) on Thursday, the Pope will […]
Nature and Numbering of English Acts of Parliament
We've been weeding the collection of reference materials now integrated into the Library's Core Collection. (Don't worry, we're not throwing anything out; we're just moving many of the older or no-longer-topical materials to the stacks or into storage.) In the process, we've found some pretty arcane and interesting things. This is one of them. In […]
English law was adopted as Canadian law at Confederation, right?
Wrong. Another simple question at the Reference Desk last week. But we all know English law was received into Canada at some point, don't we? We may think we know that, but I didn't have any idea just how complicated the answer to the question of what law was received and when until I went […]
A quick guide to rare books
This is a post that really seems to straddle the boundary behind low brow and high brow, since it's about rare books, but via Pawn Stars. If you've seen Pawn Stars, you'll know that it's an extremely popular reality television show that is based out of the Silver and Gold Pawn Shop in Las Vegas. […]
Food and the Law
As a law librarian who also really, really likes to cook, I am always interested when issues regarding food and the law crop up. There has obviously been a surge of awareness, advocacy, and engagement with these issues over the past decade or so, with a host of media attention lavished upon previously unheralded issues […]
What is your verdict on Louis Riel?
November 16 marked the 127th anniversary of the hanging of Louis Riel, a fascinating and important figure in Canada’s, and especially in Manitoba’s, history. Much has been written about him, the Northwest Rebellion, the creation of the Province of Manitoba, his dealings with the federal government, his mental state and his trial and execution. The […]
Early English Laws Project
Initiated in 2006, the Early English Laws project aims to produce new editions of all legal codes and treatises produced in England between the reign of Æthelberht of Kent (ca 580-616) and Magna Carta (1215). The project addresses four principal research questions or problems: What are the early English law texts? What do the texts say? What […]
The Senate is Making News
The Globe and Mail reports this morning that the Senate will likely defeat Bill C-290, An Act to Amend the Criminal Code (Sports Betting), which would allow Canadians to bet on a single sports event. While it is unusual enough for the Senate not to pass a bill that has passed in the House of […]