Legal Research

Scavenger Hunt Wraps Up on Sunday

By Simon Chester

The Slaw Scavenger Hunt challenge Scavenger Hunt is down to a handful of items - our prominent lawyer from Toronto has an insuperable lead, but let’s see whether the last 3 items can be guessed.

I’ve amplified the big fat hairy hints we gave last week. 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.

The three outstanding items are

? A work cited by Bertha Wilson in 1984, by the Supreme Court of India in 1994 and the Australian High Court in 1999. The author Maine said that every important legal reform since then stemmed from its influence. In this work, according to a judgment in one of the First World Trade Centre bombing cases, the author used the phrase “international law”, reputedly the first time those words had been joined together. He continues to attend meetings of the College where he is, but there’s some controversy about whether he votes.

? 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. The code forbade stratagies of deceit, all attacks on non-combatants and unarmed adversaries, irrespective of whether the war being fought was a just war or not.

? 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). The primary US case on the topic says it still continues to regulate the commerce, the intercourse, and the warfare of mankind. La Forest J referred to it in the most important recent SCC judgment in this area of the law.

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

And as a final clue, the map below shows where the items are from:

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 29, 2009 (boomark / email).