The Statutes Project

The History of Parliament Project ( @histparl.bsky.social ) on the Representation of the People Act:

historyofparliament.com/2018/02/06/t...

#History #LegalHistory

1918: 7 & 8 George 5 c.64: Representation of the People Act 1918: 7 & 8 George 5 c. 64: An Act to amend the Law with respect to Parliamentary, and Local Government Franchises, and the Registration of Parliamentary and Local Government Electors, and the …

#OTD in 1918:

The Representation of the People Act is passed, extending the vote to men over 21 and some women over 30.

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

#History #LegalHistory

One assumes the journalists believe every piece of law should be repealed on a yearly basis and have to go back through Parliament if people want to keep it. To avoid being archaic or arcane and suchlike

a) a century is not a long time in the context of the UK parliament and the law
b) it's only a century old if you count the 1911 Parliament Act and ignore the 1949 Parliament Act which amended it
c) Parliament Acts are established parts of the UK system- reporting them as "old" is a weird framing

And bibliographized here:
statutes.org.uk/site/collect...

#Seychelles #LegalHistory

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...

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 […]

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...

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) (image source: University of Nottingham ) The University of Nottingham released a draft program  of the upcoming British Legal History Con...

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...

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...

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

Chronological This page lists volumes of statutes in chronological order, from the Act of Union between England and Scotland, up to fifty years ago when government publications come into the public domain. The v…

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.

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…

#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...

depressed lawyer with briefcase looking across at dorky-looking robot also with briefcase

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...

Early Modern Women’s Life-Writing and English Law Early Modern Women’s Life-Writing and English Law

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 🗃️

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 …

“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 action plan for justice

'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...

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...

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.