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statutes.bsky.social
The Statutes Project
@statutes.bsky.social
Opening up Historic British Law and Legislation and digitally deforming it
8th in thread of #PublicDomain books I've got Google to make fully available:

The Laws of Seychelles Revised:
1: Mauritius Laws Applicable: books.google.co.uk/books?id=LId...
2: Local Laws 1872-1898: books.google.co.uk/books?id=Gop...
3: Local Laws 1899-1906: books.google.co.uk/books?id=DYd...
The Laws of Seychelles Revised: Seychelles local laws, 1899-1906, by W.L. Rind
books.google.co.uk
January 24, 2026 at 9:03 AM
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Historians and legal scholars: please submit your articles for the Burbank Global Legal History prize! Any article published in 2025 is eligible. The deadline is June 1.

I am chairing the committee this year so reach out with any questions!

aslh.net/award/jane-b...
Jane Burbank Global Legal History Article Prize | American Society for Legal History
The Jane Burbank Article Prize in global legal history will be awarded annually to the best article in regional, global, imperial, comparative, or transnational legal history published in the previous...
aslh.net
January 23, 2026 at 3:10 PM
The article linked in the post below:

Librarianship at the Crossroads of ICE Surveillance
www.inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org/2019/ice-sur...

Relx & Thompson-Reuters own LexisNexis and Westlaw, two of the largest proprietory legal databases.
January 22, 2026 at 1:14 PM
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Given all the news about ICE in the past few weeks, can I kindly remind you all that RELX (owners of Elsevier & LexisNexis) is "mission-critical" to ICE.

ICE pays RELX Group and Thomson Reuters millions of dollars for the personal data it needs to fuel its big data policing program […]
Original post on mastodon.social
mastodon.social
January 22, 2026 at 9:58 AM
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DRAFT PROGRAM: Law and Governance - 27th British Legal History Conference (Nottingham: University of Nottingham, 1-4 JUL 2026)

@uniofnottingham.bsky.social

esclh.blogspot.com/2026/01/draf...
DRAFT PROGRAM: Law and Governance - 27th British Legal History Conference (Nottingham: University of Nottingham, 1-4 JUL 2026)
(image source: University of Nottingham ) The University of Nottingham released a draft program  of the upcoming British Legal History Con...
esclh.blogspot.com
January 14, 2026 at 10:08 AM
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Our first book of 2026 will be #Law & #Justice in the 1950s: Case Studies From a Neglected Decade, edited by Fiona Cownie and Rosemary Auchmuty, part of our #OpenAccess Reimagining Law and Justice series published with @ials.bsky.social.

Read more here:
uolpress.co.uk/book/law-and...

#LegalStudies
Law and Justice in the 1950s - University of London Press
The 1950s was a decade of considerable legal development in England and Wales, despite often being regarded as very conservative in contrast to the more radical 1960s and 1970s. This collection illust...
uolpress.co.uk
January 6, 2026 at 4:00 PM
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When I moved to Ireland, a colleague joked - I thought then - that Irish legislation took whatever had passed in Westminster, did find-replace "Queen" with "the State", and stuck a harp on the front.

Sorry for doubting you, Fachtna.
This is great. The "indemnity basis" only exists in England and Wales. They've literally copied and pasted the Brits. Good job, lads.
January 6, 2026 at 8:12 PM
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As it was asked about on Mastodon, here's the form to get Google Books to release #PublicDomain titles:

support.google.com/websearch/an...

NB: Snippet view shows Google has a digital version to release.
NB 2: cite relevent law, or proof that author died over 70 (in UK) years ago.
Your Google Books inquiry - Google Search Help
support.google.com
January 6, 2026 at 11:32 AM
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1975 a big year for statute law consolidation, with 16 Consolidation Acts en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consoli... a feat matched in 1979 but unsurpassed since, as demand for pristine texts reduced with the availability of perpetually revised digital editions
January 2, 2026 at 12:25 AM
#OTD in 1819: The Seditious Meetings Act is passed. One of the 'Six Acts' passed to suppress radical movements in the wake of Peterloo.

statutes.org.uk/site/the-sta...

#History
December 24, 2025 at 8:04 AM
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However, that section excepted the civil service. In the UK Foreign Service, the 'marriage bar' obliged women to retire upon marriage until 1973.

Many countries had similar rules. They weren't relics, either - most were enacted *after* WWI or WW2, and persisted the longest in foreign services.
December 23, 2025 at 8:14 PM
#OTD in 1919: the Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act is passed.

"A person shall not be disqualified by sex or marriage from the exercise of any public function, or from being appointed to or holding any civil or judicial office or post"

statutes.org.uk/site/the-sta...

#History #LegalHistory
1919: 9 & 10 George 5 c.71: Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act.
1919: 9 & 10 George 5 c.71: An Act to amend the Law with respect to disqualifications on account of sex. [23rd December 1919] Be it enacted by the King’s most Excellent Majesty, by and wi…
statutes.org.uk
December 23, 2025 at 7:36 PM
Bizarre Legal AI grift comes a cropper.

Text version: pivot-to-ai.com/2025/12/18/r...
December 22, 2025 at 4:42 PM
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Robin AI: a legal review AI that was humans! And it just went broke

‘Well, we’re building an AI lawyer’

www.youtube.com/watch?v=_pdP... - video
pivottoai.libsyn.com/20251218-rob... - podcast

time: 6 min 55 sec
December 18, 2025 at 10:35 PM
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I repeat: legal data is large.
The biggest thing I can think of is federal court filings. They’re around 180,000,000,000 pages, maybe. State cases are maybe 5x that, so maybe 1,000,000,000,000 pages total? LOC is maybe 50,000,000,000 pages based on some assumptions around book length…
November 27, 2025 at 5:39 AM
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I'm actually slightly mystified at how I managed to bypass the palaver, but I have this URL which is working for me without logging in to anything: edinburghuniversitypress.com/pub/media/eb...
November 20, 2025 at 8:04 AM
New #OpenAccess (though it was a bit of a palaver downloading it) #LegalHistory and #WomensHistory book:

Early Modern Women’s Life-Writing and English Law
by Lotte Fikkers

edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-early-m...

#History 🗃️
Early Modern Women’s Life-Writing and English Law
Early Modern Women’s Life-Writing and English Law
edinburghuniversitypress.com
November 19, 2025 at 10:32 AM
1605: 3 James 1 c.1: An act for a publick thanksgiving to Almighty God every year on the fifth day of November.

statutes.org.uk/site/the-sta...

#LegalHistory
November 5, 2025 at 8:22 AM
A very interesting piece, including this from @gwenseabourne.bsky.social

"you can always tell the historians from the lawyers at a conference, because the lawyers start a paper with the argument, while the historians always start with a story"

#History #LegalHistory 🗃️
November 4, 2025 at 11:12 AM
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“If the point is that we need to restore these human stories, why frame them within law's stories first?”

Some thoughts on history, law, storytelling and Mrs Burns

williamgpooley.wordpress.com/2025/11/04/h...

🗃️
Her Story
Valerie Margaret Small was born in 1941. In her teens, her domineering father was sick and bedridden, and she was expected to look for work. She trained as a tailor and then, aged 19, took driving …
williamgpooley.wordpress.com
November 4, 2025 at 6:27 AM
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'AI shows great potential to help deliver swifter, fairer, and more accessible justice for all - reducing court backlogs, increasing prison capacity and improving rehabilitation outcomes as well as victim services.'

Jesus fucking christ will this dangerous nonsense never end?
AI action plan for justice
www.gov.uk
October 26, 2025 at 12:22 PM
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Researching a legal moment that was supposed to change everything - whether it did or not? The call for papers for 'Moments of Rupture' is open until 23 October!
Free, online conference in November, hosted by the Open Universities legal histories research cluster.
#LegalHistory #cfp
The Open University
Moments of Rupture Online 20-21 November 2025Some legal and social changes are so profound that they create what seem to be moments of rupture: breaks between the ‘before’ and ‘after’. These moments c...
law-school.open.ac.uk
October 14, 2025 at 7:11 PM