Legal Research

Slaw Scavenger Hunt - Neck and Neck to the Finish

By Simon Chester

Extraordinary development in the Slaw Scavenger Hunt. Our prominent lawyer from Toronto has had an extraordinary day, and is now 7 points ahead of the Oxford expert - it’s 165 to 158. Really neck and neck.

In the last 24 hours the duelling duo have guessed the Haflida Skra or Gràgàs in Reykjavik, the Field Code from New York, UN resolution 1962 of December 13, 1963, on the “Declaration of legal principles governing activities of states in the exploration and use of outer space”, “De Indis et de ivre Belli Relectiones”, by Francisco de Vitoria (1532), Pothier’s Digest of the Pandects of Justinian and Coke’s Institutes.

The remaining items in the global Scavenger Hunt are falling fast.

In terms of the contest list of 50 dates, set by the two Simons, the table below lists the dates remaining to be identified. 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. We still 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.

I’ve amplified the big fat hairy hints we gave on Friday. The works are not so obscure that we couldn’t find lots of references to them. By the way, you can get there by skillful use of the Google search tools, and the resources of Canlii and its kin across the world. No need to spend money on the commercial databases on this project.

Four 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.
? 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

Three 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 thousand years after this Code was published, it still provided 200 out of 722 articles in another country’s first Criminal Code

Two 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.

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 progress as contestants mop up the remaining items.

Full post as published by Slaw.ca on May 23, 2009 (boomark / email).