And bibliographized here: statutes.org.uk/site/collect... #Seychelles #LegalHistory

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...

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.

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 […]

New #OpenAccess #LegalHistory from @uolpress.bsky.social Law and Justice in the 1950s Case Studies From a Neglected Decade uolpress.co.uk/book/law-and... #History

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...

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

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.

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.

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

Now in the #PublicDomain, acts of the UK parliament for 1975: Vol 1: books.google.co.uk/books?id=qER... Vol 2: books.google.co.uk/books?id=EUV... Vol 3: books.google.co.uk/books?id=RUV... & added to the chronological bibliography of GB/UK statutes: statutes.org.uk/site/collect... #LegalHistory

#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

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.

#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

Bizarre Legal AI grift comes a cropper. Text version: pivot-to-ai.com/2025/12/18/r...

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

I repeat: legal data is large.

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...

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 🗃️

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

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 🗃️

“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... 🗃️

'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?

Some new open access #LegalHistory: inc. some thoughts from me on medieval 'petty treason'. www.qub.ac.uk/schools/Scho...

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

Statutes.org.uk is currently having server problems, and has been up and down like the proverbial yoyo for the last few hours. Apologies for the interruption; I'm trying to find out what is going on.

Short thread answering a query about the dating of 5 Elizabeth 1 c.16, An Act Against Conjurations, Inchantments and #Witchcraft. (Text of act: statutes.org.uk/site/the-sta... ) #LegalHistory

An academic article on free legal databases has just been published by a university press. Behind a paywall. And the uni I work at doesn't have access.

New Bibliography: Royal Proclamations statutes.org.uk/site/collect... #LegalHistory

Can anyone confirm that there is no free, individual access to Hein Online's "Slavery in America and the World" collection? I had an individual account, which now doesn't work, and can't see any other way to access it without going through an instititution. #LegalHistory

We're moving our Mastodon account. As our previous provider is shutting down, we've moved to hcommons.social/@bho Gi' us a follow!

More on the Ancestry vs National Records Scotland battle: Ancestry and the NRS - when the corporate genealogy world turns ugly by @chrismpaton.bsky.social scottishgenes.blogspot.com/2025/09/ance... #Archives

This is the Ancestry vs National Records of Scotland decision. There is one mention of the Open Govt License, but opening up the records isn't really discussed. Doesn't seem to have copyright implications, but I can't claim to understand all the details.

I can't find the General Regulatory Chamber decision on this case (probably because I'm completely unfamiliar with such modern matters). Can anyone point me in the right direction? #Archives #Law #FreedomOfInformation #FOI

Does anyone know of a list of early modern and c18th English spellings of words? i.e. a list of alternative spellings, such as 'publick' for publick, 'Wyllyam' for William, and so on? Surely such a thing must have been compiled? #History #LinguisticHistory 🗃️

Another 'weird laws' article: Wirral to scrap 90-year-old ban on carpet beating and ‘wanton singing’ Those ‘sounding a noisy trumpet’ or ‘inciting a dog to bark’ along part of the Merseyside coast will no longer risk arrest www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025... #LegalHistory

Updated: bibliograpy of statutes of the Irish Parliament to 1800. The Virtual Treasury has made the two last volumes ofthe IRO Early Statutes series freely available online statutes.org.uk/site/collect... #History #LegalHistory #IrishHistory 🗃️

New research reveals King George IV profited from slavery in Grenada Experts say finding heightens pressure on the monarchy to confront its historical links to slavery www.theguardian.com/world/2025/a... #History #EnslavedHistory 🗃️

New bibliographic resource: Links to the Journals of the Houses of Commons and Lords of Ireland, to 1800. Plus where to find the parliamentary debates, circa 1776 - 1797. anterotesis.com/wordpress/hi... #History #IrishHistory 🗃️

Some good news: Caribbean LGBTQ+ activists celebrate as court strikes down colonial-era laws ‘Stride in the right direction’ as Eastern Caribbean supreme court rules St Lucia’s laws on gay sex unconstitutional www.theguardian.com/world/2025/a... #LegalHistory #LGBTHistory

The reason historians don’t now use the term ‘witch hunts’ as a generalised term for the prosecution of people for witchcraft is that it implies witchcraft was always prosecuted in a different way compared to other crimes - it wasn’t

#OTD 1st August 1834, the act 3 & 4 William 4 c.73, 'for the Abolition of Slavery throughout the British Colonies' came into force, turning the enslaved into apprentices and compensating the slave-owners. statutes.org.uk/site/the-sta... #LegalHistory #EnslavedHistory

This book looks very interesting, and is #OpenAccess: Staging Witchcraft Before the Law Skepticism, Performance as Proof, and Law as Magic in Early Modern Witch Trials www.cambridge.org/core/element... #LegalHistory #Witchcraft

Text of the act: www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/Geo5/9... #History #LegalHistory

I think it is hard to underestimate how important this website is for the Rule of Law in the UK. Before 2010, if you wanted to find out what statutes were actually in force you essentially needed a subscription to a very expensive commercial product like Halsbury's Statutes.

Turns out legislation.gov.uk is 15 years old today. How the time flies @jenitennison.com!

Text of the printed act: babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=ps... #LegalHistory

Text of the act: statutes.org.uk/site/the-sta... #History 🗃️

My co-editor @jenguiliano.bsky.social & I are excited to share the June 2025 issue of #ReviewsInDH, which features projects that engage with legal sources to challenge conventional understanding of Black history. reviewsindh.pubpub.org/v6-n6

Fixed some links on my Chronological bibliography of British / UK statutes, 1707-1974: statutes.org.uk/site/collect... #LegalHistory