Legal Research

Slaw Scavenger Hunt - Week 2 Update - Big Fat Hairy Hints

By Simon Chester

This week, we’ve had a couple of new entrants and Mary Wollstonecraft’s pioneering work on the Rights of Women was accurately spotted, but the remaining items in the global Scavenger Hunt are still stumping Slaw readers.

In terms of the contest list of 50 dates, set by the two Simons, the table below lists the dates remaining to be identified. The lead is still in Oxford, with a prominent lawyer from Toronto is close behind with 115 points.

That list of dates (which trumps both the UNESCO and Simon and Simon lists) is a real revelation. When the contest ends we’ll be able to provide the Library of Congress and UNESCO with a thoughtful guide to the world’s collective legal heritage. But we need your thoughts too.. Our contestants have successfully identified the dates listed here, as well as giving us some food for thought with their own nominations for what should be in the legal heritage of mankind.

To stimulate frustrated searchers this is the week we’ll give you big fat hairy hints to supplement the map we posted last week which showed the location of the outstanding items. The works are not so obscure that we couldn’t find lots of references to them.

Seven of the outstanding items are books.
They include

? The oldest volume in a major law library’s collection, featured prominently on its website. Slaw has mentioned this library nineteen times.
? A work by one of the founders of international law questioning colonization and upholding the rights of native peoples. He asserted that pagans have rights to life, liberty and property
? the first publication of a work that has been cited 76 times by the Supreme Court of Canada (according to Canlii)
? Two works that are the most important doctrinal sources in each of their legal systems,

? the first one of these doctrinal sources has been cited six times by the House of Lords and it’s in the LSUC’s Great Library Rare Book Room Riddell Section;

? the other has been cited twice in the House of Lords, once in an 1839 USSC decision and by Pigeon J in the SCC. The SCC Library has eleven items in its catalogue under this author

? A work cited by Bertha Wilson in 1984, by the Supreme Court of India in 1994 and the Australian High Court in 1999. Maine said that every important legal reform since the stemmed from its influence
? A work cited by Iacobucci J and Finlayson JA, by the Court of Appeal of the Solomon Islands and mentioned in “Improving Access to the Law in Canada

Five items are Codes

? One was cited by the USSC in 1896 and discussed in argument before the Australian High Court. Amazingly Canlii only mentions it in a Newfoundland decision a few weeks before Christmas last year
? An ancient code cited by the International Court of Justice in 1996 and in one of the major constitutional judgments of one jurisdiction where a judge thundered about the fundamental importance of law: “The preservation of the human race itself hinges on law”. We corrected a typo in the quote - just in case you’re tempted to Google the quote.
? A Code from the world’s oldest surviving democracy, a book fully available on the Wayback machine, in a copy that comes from the University of Toronto’s Pontifical Library
? A standard (and wonderfully readable) work of legal history says that was the year of major revolutions, but in another continent it is known as the year when this code of procedure was published. We paraphrase.
? A thousand years after this Code was published, it still provided 200 out of 722 articles in another country’s first Criminal Code

Three other items

? A document which consisted of a code of procedure, a collection of ancient customs, and a body of ordinances for the regulation of war, which became a sort of common law and which was translated into many languages (the Bodleian has it in seven languages). La Forest J referred to it in the most important recent SCC judgment in this area of the law.

? A seminal work in western law, cited three times by the SCC most recently by L’Heureux-Dubé J. The Bodleian has fifty editions and the SCC Library has seven editions from the Nineteenth Century alone.

? A legislative instrument (of sorts) which three years later was embodied into a binding instrument signed by Canada. It is the most far-reaching legal document in the entire history of mankind.

For those who want to use their research skills to compete, here is the revised table - can you guess any of the dates?

Send your entries (on one item or any number) by email to contest@slaw.ca and we?ll track the winners.

Full post as published by Slaw.ca on May 22, 2009 (boomark / email).