Layer by layer, the exterior concrete envelope of the law library is disappearing. The site is busy with an enormous crane lifting the envelope pieces up and away, the excavators digging to ready the site for foundational shoring (which you can see on our webcam), and a caisson driller prepped to get started.

• Watch this short video of the concrete removal by crane.

It's getting a little more difficult to orientate ourselves about what used to be where in the remnants of the former Bora Laskin Law Library. This is the view looking down to what was the Lower Rotunda. The door to the old locker room is towards the bottom right.

Here's a closer look at the locker doorway. The caisson driller has arrived, and is parked on site. Next week, the drilling starts as we enter the initial phase of the foundation work for the new Crescent Wing of the Jackman Law Building.

By Anver Emon

This article was first posted on The Huffington Post on May 12, 2014.

Boko Haram, the group behind the horrific kidnapping of more than 300 schoolgirls in Nigeria, says its goal is to implement Islamic law - also known as Sharia. Meanwhile, in the small Southeast Asia nation of Brunei, the Sultan has declared Sharia law that calls for punishing adultery, abortions and same-sex relationships with flogging and stoning.

Both draw upon historical tradition that they believe reflects how things ought to be.

Boko Haram draws upon a legal tradition that permitted war captives (e.g. women and children) to be treated as slaves and sold as chattel. The legal context of this rule had to do with designating certain classes of people as protected in warfare, namely women, children and the elderly. Those who could not fight or posed no military threat were to be protected and not targeted in battle. But once the opponent was defeated, all that was theirs became part of the Muslim imperial coffers. Those who were protected in war subsequently became treated as the spoils of war, and thus relegated as slaves who could be sold. When Boko Haram, therefore, invokes Islamic legal rules to frame their abduction of schoolgirls and to justify their sale to others as wives, they are drawing upon a historical tradition about the economics of warfare and conquest.