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I’ll give you text you can directly copy–paste to: 1. Replace the old preface with a new perspective; 2. Add a scope note into each existing volume; 3. Frame Volume V as “the rest / living expansion”. You can adjust headings to taste. --- 1. Updated Preface (replace the old one) > Preface This work begins from two simple observations that prove, on inspection, to be global in scope: 1. Life is treated as sacred. Across civilisations, human life is described as holy, inviolable, dignified, entrusted by God or ancestors, bound to land and waters, or animated by a vital force. Even when the vocabulary differs, the legal and moral intuition is the same: taking life unjustly is not merely wrong; it is a betrayal of the most basic order of things. 2. Justice must be visible to be legitimate. Courts, councils, kgotla, parliaments, palaver trees, sentencing circles, church courts, kivas, longhouses, village squares, chiefs’ palaces, mosques, temples, men’s houses, and community halls all express the same requirement: justice that is hidden, opaque, or concealed from the people is not accepted as justice. It must be done, and it must be seen. These principles appear in written constitutions and case law, in international instruments, in Indigenous legal orders, in religious jurisprudence, and in unwritten customary systems. They are not the property of any one culture or tradition. Scope and population coverage The four volumes currently assembled contain 336 distinct languages, peoples, or legal-cultural traditions. Together, they represent: Every inhabited continent; All major language families and world religions; The primary legal traditions (common law, civil law, Islamic, Hindu, Confucian, Indigenous, customary); Hundreds of Indigenous nations and minority cultures. Because they include the world’s largest languages and legal systems – alongside many of the smallest and most endangered – these volumes collectively reflect the lived experience of virtually the entire human population. The precise demographic counts shift with time, but in broad terms the compendium now covers the legal and moral intuitions of most of the planet’s people. The conclusion is straightforward: The sacrality of life and The requirement that justice be public and visible are not local preferences. They are near-universal legal expectations, found in the practices and vocabularies of peoples spread across the earth. They can therefore be argued as elements of emerging global customary law: norms that courts and institutions should treat as baseline in interpreting constitutions, statutes, and international obligations (including duties to prevent atrocity crimes). Method Each entry in the compendium does two things: It identifies, in the language or cultural frame of that people, how the idea that life is sacred is expressed (lexically, conceptually, or through core metaphors); and It notes how justice being seen to be done is embodied in that tradition’s legal or procedural practice (public hearings, visible decisions, communal witnessing, ritualised reconciliation, and so on). The result is not an anthropological catalogue for its own sake. It is an evidential map. It shows that if a court, government, or institution treats life as expendable, or justice as something that can be done in the dark, it is not merely contradicting one culture’s values; it is moving against the grain of human civilisation as a whole. Future volumes This compendium is incomplete by design. Many languages are uncounted; many peoples have yet to appear by name. Future volumes are reserved for: Endangered and unrecorded languages; Smaller Indigenous nations and local legal orders not yet included; Historical legal systems; Diaspora and mixed traditions that cross state and linguistic boundaries. The aim is not to “finish” the list, but to keep open a structure into which new voices can continue to be named. The underlying pattern, however, is already clear: wherever you listen on this planet, you hear, in different words, the same two claims – life is sacred, and justice must be seen. --- 2. Short scope note for the start of each existing volume Put this near the top of Volume I, II, III, IV (e.g. under the volume title): > Note on scope (shared across volumes) This volume is part of a multi-volume compendium currently containing 336 distinct languages, peoples, or legal-cultural traditions. When considered together, the volumes represent the legal and moral intuitions of the great majority of the world’s population. Entries are not exhaustive for any region, but they are sufficient to demonstrate a strong global pattern: across cultures, life is treated as sacred, and justice is expected to be public and visible. Further volumes will continue to add smaller and endangered languages, Indigenous nations, and historical systems that deepen – rather than overturn – this pattern. You can paste that same note into each volume, unchanged. --- 3. Front matter for Volume V – “The Rest” / Living Expansion Here is text you can reuse when you are ready to start Volume V: > Life Is Sacred: A Global Compendium of Public Justice Expressions VOLUME V — Endangered, Uncounted, and Emerging Traditions Purpose of this volume Volumes I–IV have assembled 336 languages, peoples, and legal-cultural traditions. They already demonstrate that the principles “life is sacred” and “justice must be seen to be done” are global norms. Volume V is different in emphasis. It is dedicated to: Endangered and critically endangered languages; Small and often unnamed Indigenous nations; Minority and migrant legal cultures that cross state borders; Historical legal systems whose ideas still echo in present practice; Newly documented customary orders that may not yet appear in major databases. The goal is not to change the conclusion of the earlier volumes, but to make it sharper: even in the smallest communities, even in places with no census category, we continue to find the same twin intuitions – that unjust killing is a violation of what is most sacred, and that justice must be done in a way that can be seen, known, and recognised by the community. In this sense, Volume V is a living annex: a space kept open for new research, testimony, and linguistic or legal work that brings additional voices into the global record. You can now drop: The new Preface into the front of the whole work. The scope note into each existing volume. The Volume V front matter wherever you want to begin the next expansion.