Legal Research

Okay - here are all of the dates that have been successfully identified by the contestants in the Slaw Scavenger Hunt, designed to see if we could supplement the entries in the World Digital Library. We listed fifty dates, and in two days our readers have spotted over half.

1750 BCE The Code of Hammurabi in the Louvre
451 BCE The Law of The Twelve Tables (Rome) - original lost, but text is here and here.
348 BCE Plato's Laws available here or on Project Gutenberg
438 Code of Theodosian (Rome) is here
506 Lex Romana Visigothorum, or Breviarium Alaricianum (Rome)
533 Justinian's Institutes (Rome) are here
1215 Magna Carta, also called Magna Carta Libertatum (the Great Charter of Freedoms). Amended version of 1297 from the UK Statute Law Database and Original and translation version available at the British Library website
1274 Summa Theologica
1625 Grotius’ De iure belli ac pacis
1690 Locke’s Two Treatises on Civil Government
1748 Montesquieu De l’esprit des lois
1772 Somersett v Stewart found that slavery was illegal in England (though not in the Empire) (1772) 20 State Tr 1; (1772) Lofft 1
1765 Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England
1803 Marbury v. Madison
1804 Napoleon’s Code civil
1857 Dred Scott v. Sandford
1864 Geneva Convention
1881 Holmes, The Common Law
1900 Burgerliches Gezetzbuch
1921 Permanent Court of International Justice
1919 The Covenant of the League of Nations
1931 Statute of Westminster
1945 Nuremburg Indictments
1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights is here
1957 Treaty of Rome
1996 Constitution of the Republic of South Africa (we were actually thinking of the Constitutional Court Certification of the Amended Text of the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, (since in terms of constitutional law, the process was fascinating), but insisting on that detail would really be nerdy)
2002 Convention establishing International Criminal Court

And there are still twenty-two dates out there to be guessed. Send your entries to contest@slaw.ca