Brilliant: a database of AI legal hallucination cases:
https://www.damiencharlotin.com/hallucinations/
Currently at 117 cases!
The Statutes Project
Opening up Historic British Law and Legislation
and digitally deforming it
The Statutes Project boosted:
Requested from, and released by, Google Books, as it is #PublicDomain, this very useful volume:
A Bibliography of Parliamentary Debates of Great Britain
https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=nywNAQAAIAAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false
New to me, another fine collection of historical slavery legislation:
US Anti-Slavery Laws Archive
Includes maps!
Just managed to get ChatGPT to hallucinate a historic statute. Fed it the first five clauses, and even though it idenitifed the act, it just made up another five. sections.
All sounded plausible, but just wasn't the act itself.
The Statutes Project boosted:
NEW
Why is it easier to access US court documents than UK court documents?
How we can follow developments in US legal cases in a way which is impossible here
By me, at Prospect
The Statutes Project boosted:
I've written a new blog post on the #Trove API keys debacle that answers some questions raised by my first two posts, and provides some updates on recent actions by the National Library of Australia. https://updates.timsherratt.org/2025/04/11/update-on-trove-data-access.html Please share!
Mass repeal of obsolete legislation coming up in #Ireland:
This is a great resource: 355 historic statutes on slavery from the Atlantic World, 1661 - 1838.
Laws of Enslavement and Freedom in the Anglo-Atlantic World
New bibliography: the 6 volumes (mainly in eye-watering gothic type) of John Cay's Statutes at Large:
https://statutes.org.uk/site/collections/british-and-irish/cay-statutes-at-large-1215-1758/
Will try to find time to write this up into a blog post, but was asked a question in the comments about #CrowdSourcing the transcription and correction of historic statutes:
https://statutes.org.uk/site/new-year-new-social-media/#comment-6290
TLDR: #Wikisource is the best place to do it.
This could be a cracking case:
Share of €500,000 jackpot offered to men who bought scratchcard with stolen credit card
Winnings as yet unclaimed by thieves in Toulouse who bought scratchcard amid legal debate over who gets payout
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/feb/21/toulouse-france-legal-debate-scratchcard-jackpot
The lost court of King's Bench: a recreation of the #c18th court in Westminster Hall.
Volumes of statutes for 1974 added to the chronological bibliography of British / UK legislation:
https://statutes.org.uk/site/collections/british-and-irish/chronological/
A lot of legal anniversaries amongst these:
Ten labour history anniversaries in 2025
https://sslh.org.uk/2025/01/01/ten-labour-history-anniversaries-in-2025/
* Criminalization and decriminalization of Unions.
* Sex Discrimination Act 1975
* Human Rights Act coming into force, 2000
As is now trad on new Years Day, I have requested that Google Books release the volumes of UK statutes for 1974, that have, by virtue of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, section 164
https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1988/48/section/164
now come into the public domain.
The Statutes Project boosted:
NEW
How the lore of New Year defeated the law of New Year
How the English state gave up on insisting the new year started on 25 March
By me
Substack: https://emptycity.substack.com/p/how-the-lore-of-new-year-defeated
Some Statutes Project bibliographic work:
Acts & Ordinances of the Interregnum:
https://statutes.org.uk/site/collections/british-and-irish/acts-and-ordinances-of-the-interregnum/
3 vols of early statutes added to pre-1800 Irish law:
https://statutes.org.uk/site/collections/british-and-irish/ireland-to-1800/
The Statutes Project boosted:
#OnThisDay, 15 Dec 1838, Caroline Norton uses a pen name to publish a pamphlet campaigning for the Infant Custody Bill.
Until the bill was passed, in 1839, divorced women had no custody rights over their children as they were seen as the father's property.
#WomenInHistory #OTD #History #WomensHistory #BritishHistory #Histodons
1/2
The Statutes Project boosted:
This is a very fine and startling piece, on how Greenwich Village became Bohemia due to the first night court being sited there in 1907.
Greenwich Village was a few years later the home of New York #Dada.
The Statutes Project boosted:
Sophie Couchman and I have been awarded the 2024 Annual Prize in Legal History (Best Article or Book Chapter) for our 2023 article, 'Identification Photography and the Surveillance of Chinese Mobility in Colonial Australasia’, awarded by the Australian and New Zealand Legal History Society. Yay us!
Client Info
Server: https://mastodon.social
Version: 2025.04
Repository: https://github.com/cyevgeniy/lmst