The Old Bailey, also known as Justice Hall, the Sessions House, and the Central Criminal Court, is probably the most famous criminal court in the world. It hears cases remitted to it from all over England and Wales as well as the Greater London area.
Transcripts of 210,000 trials from across four centuries are now freely available online through a new website: The Proceedings of the Old Bailey, 1674-1913. The website also includes 195,000 digital images and contemporary maps, images of the courtroom and information on the historical and legal background to the Old Bailey court.
This Friday and Saturday, HLS Librarian and Professor Terry Martin will be hosting a conference entitled “Spoils of War v. Cultural Heritage: The Russian Cultural Property Law in Historical Context.”
This conference will take place in the Langdell South Classroom. Click here for extensive conference details.
There is no charge for the conference, but attendees must register in advance. Click here to register.
Next Saturday, Australians will go to the polls, as is their legal obligation, to elect a new federal government. The Australian Broadcasting Commission web site provides extensive election coverage. Antony Green’s Election Guide answers many questions someone from Up Over might have about Australian politics and government.
Compulsory Voting
The Australian Parliamentary Library has produced an excellent Research Brief about compulsory voting in Australia. It covers the history of compulsory voting, mentions other countries that have some form of compulsory voting, and provides comparative voter turnout tables for other countries, including the U.S.A.
The Australian Electoral Commission web site publishes an Electoral Backgrounder on compulsory voting, providing an introduction to Australian electoral law, policy, and procedures.
Australian Prisoners and the Vote
Also of interest is a recent High Court of Australia case in which the Court restored the right to vote to prisoners having sentences of less than three years. Read Roach v. Electoral Commissioner [2007] HCA 43 here; read about it here.
According to the Sentencing Project “an estimated 5.3 million Americans are denied the right to vote because of laws that prohibit voting by people with felony convictions,” including those no longer in prison.
Are you wondering if the High Court is the Australian equivalent to our United States Supreme Court? Check out our online Guide: Researching Australian Law.
The Indian Parliament passed the Competition (Amendment) Bill earlier this week and it has been sent on for the President’s signature. This new law will make the Competition Commission of India fully operational by 2008. More details here and the bill is here
A colleague of mine at the Paul Martin Law Library at the University of Windsor in Ontario, Canada, has just created a new research guide on compiling Canadian legislative histories. Many of the resources she mentions in her guide can either be found at the Law Library or at Lamont’s Government Documents section. For this and other guides created by Annette Demers and her colleagues, click here.
The Doing Business database, a service of the World Bank, provides information on business regulations and their enforcement in 175 economies from around the world. This includes a Doing Business Map that allows you to click on a particular country to find out how difficult or easy it is to do business there. The database also has a Law Library section that offers the largest online collection of full-text business laws and regulations from authoritative sources. The library can be browsed by either country or type of law.
The Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) has launched a full-text database that provides “information and documentation on the entire trade disputes process, from initial filing to final enactment”.
Known as IDATD, Integrated Database of Trade Disputes for Latin America and the Caribbean, this “database consolidates into a single site information on trade agreements and disputes, both ongoing and resolved, within the World Trade Organization (WTO), the North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the Andean Community of Nations (CAN), the Southern Common Market (Mercosur), the Central American Common Market, and the Caribbean Community and Common Market (CARICOM)”.
The database is searchable by trade system, complainant and respondent countries, year, number and object of the dispute, as well as by subject. The website includes background information, such as how dispute mechanisms operate, and links to legal texts of the dispute settlement systems established under trade agreements.
The database is available in English (http://idatd.eclac.cl) and Spanish (http://badicc.eclac.cl).
An interim constitution has been finalized following consensus between 8 political parties and Maoist rebels. Interim Constitution
