For #NationalTeaDay, what I think is the first statute to mention Tea. Taxes it, of course.
A Grant of certaine Impositions upon Beere Ale and other Liquors for the encrease of His Majestyes Revenue dureing His Life.
www.british-history.ac.uk/statutes-rea...
#History
I'm excited to share that we've made a collection of historic Supreme Court Records and Briefs available via
@archive.org
I've written a blog post where I go into detail about the importance of this collection.
blog.archive.org/2026/04/20/u...
🚨Tomorrow, @JudiciaryGOP & @HouseJudiciary hold a hearing on the PRO CODES Act.
As SCOTUS has already ruled: “No one can own the law.”
This bill threatens that precedent by extending copyright to public laws and standards, restricting your right to access the rules we live by. ⚖️🏛️
Call for papers for Law, race and empire conference: By popular request, we are pleased to offer an extended deadline of Tuesday 28th April for proposals for this exciting event. The law and its authority has always been a contested space. From the adversarial trial and debates on legal reform to discretionary decision making on who was tried, and pleas for clemency, the way people have navigated legal landscapes has always been both fraught and multi-faceted. This complexity is exacerbated in the imperial context, where the law could be both a symbol of the metropole’s control and, conversely, a safeguard against oppression. Over the last half century studies of legal practice, race relations and the maintenance of empires have flourished, deepening our understanding of these aspects of 18th and 19th century life. Yet this was an age where the abolitionist movement ensured that race and the law were a key part of the social agenda. Simultaneously, European militaries engaged in imperial expansion and policing, often forming racialist attitudes in the process which were both adopted, and influenced, by the metropole. Race, law and empire, therefore, should not be considered in isolation. This conference, which forms part of the Leverhulme Trust Funded ‘Sepoys and Slave Soldiers’ Research Fellowship, aims to take a holistic view of the intersections between race, law, armed forces and imperialist projects. In doing so, it seeks to widen our understanding of constructions of race, the rule of law and the operation of empires. This international, hybrid conference welcomes proposals for 20 minute papers, or full panels of three papers, which explore any two of the conference’s three core themes of race, empire and law between 1750 and 1850. 300 word paper proposals, with a 150 word biography and a stated preference for in person or online attendance, should be submitted to Dr Zack White (zack.white@port.ac.uk).
Race, Law and Empire, 1750-1850 Conference
University of Southampton AND online
17th - 18th July 2026
Call for Papers extended by popular request.
Full details below. Please share widely.
Established, emerging researchers are very welcome.
Supported by @leverhulme.ac.uk
On 11 June 2026, I'm running an online intro to early modern legal records, part of The National Archives' Practical Archival Skills Training #TNAPAST workshops. More details can be found via the link. For accompanying on-site workshops, see the below thread www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/past-early...
Story time. Back in 2009, when I started CourtListener, I had the goal of collecting all the case law. I was young, naive, and I worked really hard at it. I gathered data from places like Public.Resource.org, and scraped what I could from other sources. 1/4
Do you mean the continued use of regnals after his execution? They are used in the texts of the Acts & Ordnances to refer to previously passed laws.
Or the use of plain dates? The Acts & Ordnances don't have regnals but are dated.
www.british-history.ac.uk/no-series/ac...
By my count, there's 122 subscribers named there.
According to
www.british-history.ac.uk/survey-londo...
There were 353 by August 1799, a list of them being in the Port and River archive @ the Museum of London.
The Port of London act 1799
www.legislation.gov.uk/gbla/Geo3/39...
Lists (some?) subscribers in clause 38, and Commissioners in clause 130.
HTH.
Happily, our regnal year calculator - niche even by our standards - only covers the lifespan of the UK Parliament, so does not need to cope with regicide
api.parliament.uk/regnal-years
A fine instance of how problematic regnal calendars are.
Printed text from the Reports of Sir John Kelyng
In 1660, judges couldn't agree on which regnal year to use in the indictment against the regicides, as the crime of killing Charles I occurred on the last regnal day of Charles I's reign but also the first of Charles II's. So they just went with "30 Jan 1649" [from Sir John Kelyng's Reports]
For the first time ever, **in 2026**, it will be legal in Missouri for pregnant women to divorce their husbands.
divorce.law/guides/news/...
Thank you!
Illuminated Statute Book
Illuminated Statute Book
Look, Statutes of the Realm is nice and all, but let's be honest, this illuminated 15th Century statute book is nicer. TNA E 164/10
The Stamp Act:
statutes.org.uk/site/the-sta...
The repeal:
statutes.org.uk/site/the-sta...
#History #LegalHistory
The English Reports has case law from the 1630s. My page on the ER can help locate the chronologically relevent books; then it's a matter of searching by keyword in the Google-digitized volume.
statutes.org.uk/site/collect...
Any #EarlyModern folks out there who could recommend printed legal materials from England in the early 1630s, especially linked to forest law? I have a student who wants to work on this area for an undergraduate dissertation, & the go-to series I know for medieval legal sources aren't helping much.
I completely forgot I made this... a big list of English judicial records, 1500 to 1800, published and often online!
Things You MUST NOT DO In Covent Garden
A look at the old market byelaws painted on boards at Covent Garden.
londonist.com/london/histo...
#LegalHistory #London
Also worth noting for the ‘everything is online’ crowd that the numbers of archives being destroyed means that an increasing proportion cannot ever be online.
Performing Law is now published online, Open Access, extant virtually, as vibrant and vivid as a ventriloquist in a vivarium : www.cambridge.org/core/books/p... @juliestonepeters.bsky.social
Some of the most beautiful hand-drawn diagrams i've ever seen. Turkish "Justice Gazette", 1920, artist: Cerîde-i Adliyye.
Source [substack] casualarchivist.substack.com/p/poetic-jus...
#türkiye #infographics #stunning
A very quick bit of research, using this table
statutes.org.uk/site/collect...
to see how much material from the Interregnum (1649-1660) is in the English Reports.
Answer: not a lot, seemingly just vol. 82, King's Bench 11, has reports from that time.
Request for help checking website functionality!
On my Alsatia site, using Wordpress, I've just published two PDFs (of 1811 debtor relief acts):
alsatia.org.uk/site/statute...
alsatia.org.uk/site/statute...
Do they work for whatever hardware & software you're using?
Thanks!
“‘Aaronson v Channel 4’ sounds real, but it’s completely made up, Koutsogiannis v Random House is a real case, but Kamal’s summary was totally wrong. And the citation number he used to refer to another real case, Riley v Murray, was a reference to an entirely different one”
https://bit.ly/3OqPjII
CFP: Race, Law and Empire
The History of Parliament Project ( @histparl.bsky.social ) on the Representation of the People Act:
historyofparliament.com/2018/02/06/t...
#History #LegalHistory
#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
