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New Exhibition: “Justice, justice shall you pursue”: Jewish Law from Biblical Times to the Present”

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Arthur Szyk PosterJewish Law has a history of more than three thousand years. This extended time, can be divided in two main periods: The first broad period begins with the written Torah and ends with the completion of the Talmud. The second broad period is the post-Talmudic period, from the completion of the Talmud until our own day (Elon, Menachem. Jewish law: history, sources, principles).

The Hebrew word “halakhah” is usually translated as “Jewish Law”, although a more literal translation might be “the path that one walks”. The word is derived from the Hebrew root Heh-Lamed-Kaf, meaning to go, to walk, or to travel (Encyclopaedia Judaica).

The principles and rules of Jewish Law are based on the Bible. While some rules are mentioned quite explicitly, others are only implied. All are elucidated in the teachings of the Tanna’im and Amora’im – the Rabbis of the Mishnah and Talmud – and presented systematically in the codes. Thus, over the generations, a comprehensive legal system has developed.

Jewish tradition compares Jewish law to a living tree. As the Torah, the sacred scroll of the Five Books of Moses, is returned to the ark after being read in synagogue services, the liturgy quotes from the biblical book of Proverbs (4:2, 3: 18, 17): I give you good instruction; never forsake My Torah. It is a tree of life for those who hold fast to it, and those who uphold it are happy. Its ways are pleasant, and all its paths are peace. (A Living Tree. Roots and Growth of Jewish Law)

JEWISH LAW EXHIBITION title2The books for this exhibition come from the holdings of the Rare Books and Special Collections, the Nahum Gelber Law Library Special Collections, and the Humanities and Social Science Library.

Among the books presented we find a volume of the Ḥamishah ḥumshe Torah: ketav yad Temani. This is a facsimile edition of 390 copies of a manuscript of the Pentateuch, in accordance with the Yemenite tradition, with the Targum, Tafsir of Saʼadya Gaon and the Collecteana of R. Yaḥya Siani.

A miniature Shulchan Aruch, printed in Venice, in 1574. The Shulchan Aruch, or “Set Table” is a codification of Jewish law composed by Rabbi Joseph Karo in the 16th century. Together with its commentaries, it is considered the most authoritative compilation of halakha since the Talmud.

The book Sefer ha-hinukh: yavo’u vo ha-613 mitsvot, yesod Torat Moshe u-nevuato, was also printed in Venice in the Jewish year 361 [1600 or 1601]. This is an anonymous work on the 613 precepts in the order of their appearance in Scripture, giving their reasons and their laws in detail. The book is mainly based on the Sefer ha-Mitzvot and the Mishneh Torah of Maimonides.

IMG_4131One of the centerpieces is The Codex Maimuni: Moses Maimonides’ Code of law: the illuminated pages of the Kaufmann Mishneh Torah. This book, published in 1984 reprints sixty-eight of the most beautiful pages from the illuminated codex of the Kaufmann Mishneh Torah, one of the most outstanding surviving exemplars of mediaeval Hebrew book production.

A surviving example of Das talmudische Recht : auf den verschiedenen Stufen seiner Entwicklung mit dem römischen verglichen und systematisch dargestellt. Sachenrecht by S. Rubin (Wien: Druckerei-und Verlags-A.-G. Ig. Steinmann. 1938). This copy was printed in Viena, in 1938. According to a review written by W. R. Taylor, the author has planned a study of Talmudic law to be embraced in three volumes. The purpose of the project, according to Taylor, was to bring the Talmudic legislation into a scientific arrangement in harmony with modern methods and to institute a comparison of the Talmudic material with the relative parts of Roman law. At the end of each chapter there are extensive notes inclusive of references, citations, and expositions of maxims from the Talmud and the later codes of Maimonides, Asher, and Karo, and from Roman law.

Ioannis Seldeni, De synedriis & praefecturis juridicis veterum Ebraeorum. Londini: Typis Jacobi Flesher: Prostant apud Cornelium Bee …, 1650-1655. John Selden, 1584-1654, was an English jurist and a scholar of England’s ancient laws and constitution and a scholar of Jewish law. In 1650 Selden began to print the trilogy he planned on the Sanhedrin, the assembly of sages that constituted the highest political magistracy of the country.

IMG_4154 IMG_4157This exhibition was planned and organized by Sonia Smith and Svetlana Kochkina, librarians at the Nahum Gelber law Library.

Une nouvelle acquisition : Le code Henry IV … avec des violettes.

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Grace à la générosité du Wainwright Fund, qui attribue chaque année un budget destiné au développement et élargissement de la collection de notre bibliothèque dans les domaines du droit civil non-québécois, nous avons ajouté un nouveau livre rare à la Collections Wainwright :

  • Le code du très-chrestien et très-victorieux roy de France et de Nauarre, Henry IIII : Du droit ciuil iadis descrit, & à nous delaissé confusément par l’Empereur Iustinian & maintenant reduit & composé en bon & certain ordre, avec le droit ciuil de la France, contenant trente & vn liures / par M. Thomas Cormier …

photo 2L’auteur, Thomas Cormier (c.1523-1600), a été un historien et jurisconsulte français et un président en l’échiquier d’Alençon. Son Code Henry IV n’est pas un recueil d’ordonnances du souverain comme le Code Henry III, qu’on détient aussi dans notre collection, mais un traité de droit civil où l’auteur compare le droit romain et le droit civil français. L’ouvrage, destinée aux étudiants et praticiens de droit, est une synthèse du droit romain de Justinien qui selon l’auteur “à nous délaissé confusément par l’Empereur Justinien et maintenant réduit et composé en bon et certain ordre” auquel Cormier a ajouté du droit  français et plus précisément du droit français tel qu’il a été suivi en Normandie. Le traité a été rédigé d’abord en langue latine (1602) et traduit en français en 1603.

photo 5 photo 3L’exemplaire récemment acquis pour notre bibliothèque est notable par sa rareté (à notre connaissance il y a une seule copie identique de cette édition recensée dans la bibliothèque de l’université de Gand). Cette édition imprimée en 1615 à Rouen par Jean du Bosc est en toute évidence la reproduction non-autorisée de l’édition publiée en 1608 par Jean Arnaud. Jean du Bosc a copié non-seulement le texte mais aussi toute la typographie de l’ouvrage d’Arnaud et même sa marque d’impression  (Arion sur un dauphin) en mettant toutefois son propre nom sur la page titre et faisant une omission prudente de la mention de privilège. Malgré des multiples petits travaux de vers, essentiellement marginaux et affectant seulement légèrement le texte, le livre est en bon état de conservation : il a préservé sa reliure de l’époque pleine basane marron avec le dos à cinq nerfs orné aux motifs floraux dorés.

photo 1Pourquoi le Code Henry IV avec des violettes demanderiez-vous ? Parce que ce livre a conservé des traces charmantes d’un de ses lecteurs sombrés dans l’oubli, quatre violettes pressées et séchées entre ses pages, marquant peut-être la section que ce lecteur anonyme a contemplée plus longtemps et plus pensivement que les autres parce que selon Ophélie, « des pensées, [sont] en guise de pensées ».

New Exhibit: Annie MacDonald Langstaff

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annie_langstaffAnnie Langstaff, née MacDonald, a legal author, feminist, and aviatrix, was the first woman graduate in law in Québec (first-class honours, 1914), who became known because of her litigation against the Québec Bar, where she was denied access to its qualifying exams. To honour her memory the Law Library opens an exhibition featuring a selection of archival materials, including her original diploma, photographs, and grades’ transcripts.

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She was born in 1887 in Alexandria, Glengarry County, Ontario. She came to Montreal, after receiving her Senior Matriculation from the Prescott (Ontario) High School, and worked as a stenographer for Samuel W. Jacobs, K.C., head of the firm Jacobs, Hall, Couture and Fitch, a well-respected lawyer and advocate of Jewish Rights.

IMG_3262 IMG_3261In October 1911, with the encouragement of Mr. Jacobs, she entered the McGill Faculty of Law. She received her B.C.L. in May 1915, graduating with First Class Honours and a prize of $25.00. She ranked fourth in her class of eighteen and led her second year class in Company Law and her third year class in Criminal Law. After Convocation she applied to take the Quebec preliminary Bar examination. This examination was normally taken, by those wishing to study law, three years before presenting themselves for admission to practice and as a preliminary to the university program in law. Mrs. Langstaff, anticipating difficulty in being admitted, chose to complete her law program first, and then to apply for the preliminary examination.

Her application was refused by the Bar and, with Mr. Jacobs as her counsellor, she petitioned the Superior Court for a writ of mandamus summoning the Quebec Bar to show cause why it should not be ordered to grant the application since Mrs. Langstaff met all the statutory qualifications for sitting the examination. At the hearing, Mrs. Langstaff assisted in the presentation of her case. Her petition was dismissed with costs by Mr. Justice Saint-Pierre. (Dame Langstaff v. The Bar of the Province of Quebec (1915) 47 C.S. 131.).

Mr. Justice Saint-Pierre noted that Mrs. Langstaff was “a young woman of good morals and possessed of considerable ability” (p. 145), but his Lordship held that “to admit a woman and more particularly a married woman as a barrister as a person who pleads cases at the bar before judges or juries in open court and in the presence of the public, would be nothing short of a direct infringement upon public order and a manifest violation the law of good morals and public decency” (p. 39). The opinion of Mr. Justice Saint-Pierre caused a public outcry. It was the subject of a number of newspaper headlines and articles. Mrs. Langstaff’s supporters, led by Professor Carrie Derick of McGill, and the members of the Local Council of Women, organized a mass protest against his remarks and decision.

Mrs. Langstaff, still represented by Mr. Jacobs, appealed to the Court of King’s Bench. A hearing was held on 16 September 1915 and arguments were closely covered in the local press. On 2nd November, the Court in a four to one decision (Mr. Justice Lavergne dissenting), affirmed Mr. Justice Saint-Pierre’s decision (Dame Langstaff (Annie Macdonald) v. The Bar of the Province of Quebec (1916) 25 B.R. 11.). Although that was the end of her personal legal battle, she continued to fight by supporting various bills introduced to change Quebec law so as to allow women to practise law. IMG_3265But she was never allowed to write the examination and by the time the law was finally changed, in 1942, a Bachelor of Arts degree had become a prerequisite. Mrs. Langstaff was not prepared at the time in her life to return to formal university studies. Mrs. Langstaff continued her work for the law firm (which she described as “a little secretarial work, a little bookkeeping, and a little law”, McGill Reporter, 11 February 1976).

She was the first woman stenographer employed in a Montreal Criminal Court (Court of Special Sessions, June 1914). She became a successful aviatrix and, on the occasion of Marshall Foch’s visit to Montreal, circled above the city for an hour to the delight of thousands of spectators. She was the author of several articles on family law published in popular women’s journals and of an English-French French-English Quebec Legal Dictionary (1937). She retired from the firm, now known as Phillips and Vineberg, in 1965 at the age of 78. She died on 29 June 1975 at the age of 88.

On September 7, 2006 The Montréal Bar bestowed on Mrs. Annie MacDonald Langstaff a posthumous honour by giving her the Medaille du Barreau de Montréal in recognition of her accomplishments.

Information and text for this blog post were derived from the memorial plaque exhibited in the Annie Langstaff room at the Faculty of Law, McGill University.

Historical Supreme Court of Canada Judgments Now Available Online

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The Supreme Court of Canada (SCC) has made all decisions published in the Supreme Court Reports dating back to 1876 available on the SCC Judgments website.  All of these newly-added SCC decisions can also be found in the CanLII database. Please visit the official SCC Judgments website to access the judgments.

Collection Wainwright, nouvelles acquisitions: Coustumes generales du duchè d’Aouste

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Grace à la générosité du Wainwright Trust,  nous avons ajouté à la Collections Wainwright un nouvel ouvrage  très rare avec seulement quatre autres exemplaires recensés dans les bibliothèques : Coustumes generales du duchè d’Aouste : proposees & redigees par escript en l’assemblee des trois estatz gens d’eglise, nobles, practiciens, & coustumiers : auec les vz & stilz audit pays obserués / le tout reueu & corrigé, & despuis confirmé & approuué par son altesse ; auec deux tables l’vne des tiltres & l’autre des principales matieres par ordre alphabetique.  Publié à Chambery par Loys Pomar en 1588, le livre a conservé sa reliure d’origine en vélin dur avec le dos à 3 nerfs orné de fleurons dorés. Il est la première édition du coutumier du Val d’Aoste.

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Contexte historique : Les réformes du duc Emmanuel-Philibert vont dans le sens de centraliser le pouvoir dans la personne du souverain et de supprimer le pluralisme juridique typique du Moyen Age. Prenant toutefois acte du loyalisme qu’ont démontré les Valdôtains pendant l’occupation française de la Savoie et du Piémont, il confirme les franchises de La Vallée d’Aoste et ses institutions particulières, y compris le Conseil des Commis, créé le 7 mars 1536 par l’Assemblée des États pour gouverner le Pays. L‘Assemblée des États obtient du duc l’autorisation de compiler un Coutumier et de nommer à cet effet une commission de juristes présidée par le premier sénateur de Savoie Jean-Geoffroy Ginod, évêque de Belley. Commencés en 1573, les travaux de la commission s’achèvent en 1588, quand le due Charles-Emmanuel Ier promulgue enfin le recueil des Coustumes du duché d’Aouste, imprimé à Chambéry par Louis Pomar, formé de six livres et comprenant en tout 4262 articles. Summa de la science juridique valdôtaine, le Coutumier concerne tant le droit civil que pénal et règlemente les magistratures locales et les professions libérales. De nombreux juristes et praticiens collaborent à sa rédaction, dont François et Jean Humbert de Vallaise, François-René de Nus, Claude d’Avise, Antoine et Pantaléon Vaudan, Bonaventure-Philibert Bomyon, Vlincent Ottiné, Guillaunie Lyboz et Vincent Regis  (adapté de Joseph Rivolin).

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New Additions to our Digitised Collections: Law Exams from 1861-1896 and Mooters Scrapbook from 1915-1916

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We all know that e-exams for the past years are not available for the faculty of law. Not to exactly fill this gap, but to at least provide you with an insight into how the exams looked like for the 19th century McGill law students, we have digitized a volume from our Rare Books Collection that gathers the examination questions for the years 1861-1896. You can find there for example, the questions for the sessional examinations on the Civil Code for the second and third year students that were held on Tuesday, March 5th, 1872.

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Another glimpse into the student life of the days bygone is allowed by the scrapbook made by law students preparing for moot completion in in 1915-1916. The book contains handwritten accounts of the meetings, clippings from contemporary newspapers, a typewritten case Brown vs. Jones assigned to the students and the moot court decision.

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Both books are now available for viewing and downloading via WorldCat:

Examinations: http://mcgill.worldcat.org/oclc/893611291

Reports of moot trials: http://mcgill.worldcat.org/oclc/893611839

Law Rare Books: Wainwright Collection (Nouvelles Acquisitions)

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vaud 2Grace à la générosité du Wainwright Fund, qui attribue chaque année un budget destiné au développement et élargissement de la collection de notre bibliothèque dans les domaines du droit civil non-Québécois, nous avons ajouté deux nouveaux livres rares à la Collections Wainwright :

  • Cours ou explication du coustumier du pays de Vaud/ fait par Gabriel Olivier l’ainé.  Lausanne : Frédérich Gentil, MDCCVIII [1708]
  • Remarques sur les loix et statuts du Pays de Vaud / par J. Francois Boyve.  A Neuchâtel : Chez les éditeurs du Journal helvétique, MDCCLVI [1756]

vaudLes deux ouvrages publiés au XVIIIe siècle sont consacrés au droit coutumier et statutaire du Canton de Vaud (appelé autrefois le Pays de Vaud) de l’époque d’avant le Code Civil suisse federal.  Ces livres sont plus qu’un monument ou un vestige de l’histoire du droit disparu il y a longtemps, car malgré l’adoption d’un droit prive commun à toute la Suisse (Code Civil) en 1907, des subsistances des coutumes locales persistent, d’ailleurs avec l’autorisation du celui-là : “À défaut d’une disposition légale applicable, le juge prononce selon le droit coutumier” (article 1, alinéa 2 du Code civil suisse).

Les livres sont aussi notables par leur aspect physique et représentent un intérêt en tant que les artefacts dévoilant les pratiques bibliophiliques du passé. Remarques sur les loix est un volume parfaitement préservé et somptueusement relié en plein cuir rouge sang d’époque avec les filets dorés sur les plats, des fleurons et filets dorés au dos à 7 nerfs et les tranches avec un décor très original et riche en bleu paon. Par contre, Cours ou explication du coustumier est un ouvrage d’une apparence simple et visiblement insignifiante avec les pages non-ébarbées, ce qui veut dire avec ses marges conservées et non-égalisées, relié modestement en cartonnage d’époque non-coloré et sans aucun ornement.

Ce contraste frappant est un témoignage d’une étape de l’histoire de l’imprimé : avant l’introduction de la fabrication mécanisée des livres au milieu du XIXe siècle la majorité des livres ont été vendus soit sans aucune reliure, comme cahiers des feuilles pliées, non-cousues et non-coupées, soit avec les reliures très rudimentaires en papier ou en carton. En achetant un livre, le client commandait la reluire permanente chez le vendeur, qui était parfois en même temps l’éditeur et le relieur, sinon chez un autre relieur préféré. Évidemment, Remarques sur les loix aurait appartenu à un bibliophile ou un avocat prospère qui a pu se permettre de l’avoir relié de cette façon assez luxueuse. Le choix de reliure n’était dicté que par sa vanité et ses moyens : un ouvrage pouvait être décoré avec les dorures et les armoiries, relié en peau de vélin, en maroquin, en daim ou en agneau velours, en chagrin, en basane, en tissue, ou en papier coloré. Ainsi, la majorité des livres de l’époque ont survécus jusqu’à nos jours non dans l’état comme ils avaient été vendus mais avec une reliure et une apparence générale façonnée par les gouts d’un de leurs propriétaires. En conséquence, les livres qui, comme c’est le cas du Cours ou explication du coustumier, ont conservés leurs modestes emballages d’origine sont assez rares et font un bel ajout à toute collection.

Book about the McGill Law Journal: The Journal: 60 Years of People, Prose, and Publication

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So many people have published and edited with the McGill Law Journal that the Journal’s institutional memory could fill a book. This was the insight of the Managing Editor of volume 54, Eytan Bensoussan, who came up with the idea of writing a book about the history and legacy of the Journal. James Cummins, a journalist and writer from Ottawa, was commissioned to write the book by the Editor-in-Chief of volume 56. The result is an account of the singular nature of the McGill Law Journal, recounting the ways it was influenced by and has influenced the Canadian legal and political landscape.9781926716251_cover_coverbookpage-v2-modal

The McGill Law Journal is the premiere legal periodical in the history of Canadian scholarship. Since its founding in 1952 by Jacques-Yvan Morin (future leader of the Official Opposition in the National Assembly of Quebec) the Journal has been at the forefront of legal history. It was the first university-based law journal in Canada to be cited by the Supreme Court, and has since been outpaced by no other university journal in the frequency at which the Court has turned to it. And it has always has been run solely by students.

The Journal’s alumni covers a who’s who of the last 60 years in Canada, from international figures to business leaders; from national politicians to larger-than-life legal scholars; from judges to global entertainers. This is the story of the people who made the Journal work; of the people who each made their first real impacts on the world through an unearthly dedication and passion to their job at the MLJ. It is also the tale of the revolutionary ideas that flowed into, and in some situations started, in the pages of the publication they ran.

The book is based on interviews with the Journal’s alumni, a history of legal journals in Canada, and the content of each of the 58 volumes that came to be between 1952 and the end of the 60th anniversary year of the Journal in the spring of 2013. The culmination of this research provides a breathtaking picture of a history that was beginning to slowly fade into the past, strengthening the identity of a key part of Canadian society.

The journal: 60 Years of People, Prose, and Publication is now available at the Nahum Gelber Law Library: KEQ322 M34 2013.

Sources: http://lawjournal.mcgill.ca/en/text/2998, http://49thshelf.com/Books/T/The-McGill-Law-Journal-60-Years-of-People-Prose-and-Publication

Law Rare Books: New Additions to our Digitised Collections

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The Nahum Gelber Law Library is fortunate to house a special collection on French law of Ancien Regime, the Wainwright Collection. It was formed on a basis of the working library of the renowned French jurist and legal historian Francois Olivier-Martin (1879-1952), doctor of law, professor of the legal history, and a prolific scholar who published more than 60 articles and 9 monographs. The Olivier-Martin’s library reflects with a remarkable accuracy the academic interests of its former owner with three major themes of the collection: French customary law, history of professional corporations, and history of pre-revolutionary French law, which found their manifestation in his three most significant works: Histoire de la coutume de la prévôté et vicomté de Paris (1922-1930), Organisation corporative de la France d’Ancien régime (1938), and Histoire du droit français des origines a la Révolution (1948). Those works, which are unrivaled in their use of primary sources and the breadth of the synthesis, are still widely cited by scholars writing about the history of French law or the history of professional corporations.

The copies of Histoire de la coutume…, Organisation corporative…, and Histoire du droit français… currently held in the McGill Law Library formerly belonged to Francois Olivier-Martin and bear multiple authorial manuscript annotations. book 82

Another feature that makes the McGill’s copies of Histoire de la coutume,and Organisation corporative unique is the fact that they contain more than 100 sheets of Olivier-Martin’s research notes, newspaper clippings, and letters. Notes 1 Notes 5

Recently, all three works as well as the enclosed ephemera have been digitised and now available for viewing and downloading via WorldCat:

Electronic McGill Cite Guide, Westlaw Next, and new La Reference

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Since this week, we have access to the new platforms with improved user interfaces for the Westlaw Next Canada and La Reference (former DCL/ REJB).

One of the most important new features of the Westlaw Canada Next is the access to an electronic version of the Canadian Guide to Uniform Legal Citation (8th edition).

All the links in the Law Subject guide and on the Law Library branch page have been updated to lead to the new platforms.