This paper traces a case decided by Cassation Council--the highest civil court in Lebanon-- in 2009. The case file includes evidence and previous rulings that reach back into the late 20th century, and concerns an inheritance claim adjudicated in Christian personal status courts. Although the case is decided in 2009, it originates during the 1975-1990 Lebanese civil war. The 1932 census emerges as a critical terrain of both evidence and inquiry for the jurists who sit on the council. However, it the gendered and sexual architecture of the census that most preoccupies the jurists--a register of the census that remains understudied and theorized in the academic literature on Lebanon. Following this case, I suggest that sectarianism has an affective and epistemological archival force, one that can be productively read against in both legal and more traditional archives.