The Supreme Court of the United Kingdom, by  Donna Sokol, In Custodia Legis, Law Librarians of Congress

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Yesterday we celebrated the fourth birthday of In Custodia Legis, and today we have reached another milestone: this is the 1,000th blog post that we’ve published!  We asked David S. Mao, the Law Librarian of Congress, to write the 1,000th post.  In it, he highlights some of the many different areas of interest for the Law Library of Congress, such as legal systems, courts, foreign law, and of course, our collection of current and historical legal materials.

On a trip to London in 2012, I walked past the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom located in Parliament Square. Unfortunately, I did not have the opportunity to visit the Court, as it was Sunday and the building was closed. I was, however, able to take a picture of the front doors.

Earlier this summer, I visited London again. This time I made sure to visit Parliament Square on a weekday so I was able to visit the Court.

While the UK has a long history as a sovereign state, the Supreme Court is a very new entity in the UK. It was created by the Constitutional Reform Act of 2005, with the Justices of the Supreme Court sitting for the first time in October 2009. The Court hears civil appeals from all parts of the UK, and criminal appeals from England, Wales, and Northern Ireland. I’ll leave it to Clare to explain the intricacies of the Court’s jurisdiction. . . .