Guide to legal history resources on the web
The following is a selective
guide to legal history resources on the World Wide Web, with special emphasis
on archives and rare book collections that are relevant to legal history.
Please send any corrections and additions to Melissa Bernstein (Reference Librarian, Tarlton Law Library).
- The Ames Foundation, based at Harvard Law School, supports research into English legal history through publications (notably the Year Books of Richard II)
and grants. The site includes a catalogue of their publications.
- The Bentham Project is editing and publishing the complete works of the great English legal reformer Jeremy Bentham. The site includes bibliographies of Bentham's works
and a brief biography.
- The Federal Judicial Center makes several
publications of the Federal Judicial History Office available via its web
site (in Adobe PDF format), including Creating the Federal Judicial
System, A Directory of Oral History Interviews Related to the Federal
Courts, A Guide to the Preservation of Federal Judges' Papers,
and its newsletter The Court Historian.
- H-LAW is the H-NET (Humanities Online) discussion list devoted to legal and constitutional history. Its web site includes logs of H-LAW discussions, book reviews, a directory of
legal historians, and links to the American Society for Legal History, the
index to Law & History Review, and other sites of interest
to legal historians.
- Iura Communia provides access to bibliographic information, texts, articles, announcements, discussion, and links relating the history of Ius Comune, the common law of continental legal systems. Most of the text is in Italian. Maintained by Mario Montorzi, Faculty of Jurisprudence, University of Pisa.
- Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes' Civil War service is documented as part of a web site devoted to the 20th Massachusetts Infantry, "The Harvard Regiment." Included is the full text of Holmes' famous 1884 Memorial Day speech
- Legal History Connections,
maintained by Prof. Bernard Hibbitts of the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, offers links to Web sites on American legal history, ancient law, and English legal history. Links to legal history course materials by Prof. Hibbits and others are available via his home page.
- NetSERF: The internet connection for medieval resources has a sizable set of links to resources on medieval legal history, including full-text sources, essays, and bibliographies.
Completely overhauled and redesigned in June 2000.
- Roman law resources, by Ernest Metzger, Faculty of Law, University of Aberdeen, includes annotated links to many online Roman law texts, as well as links to other Roman law web
sites, and directories of ancient law historians and booksellers specializing in Roman Law.
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- California state archives: general information on records of state appellate courts,
constitutional conventions, and Spanish & Mexican land grants.
- Maine state archives, judicial records: historical sketches of the state's courts and an overview of the records they generate.
- Maryland state archives: finding aids for state agency records include several for Maryland court records from colonial times to the modern era.
- Minnesota Historical
Society, Research Center: search PALS (their online catalog) for the
subject "Court records--Minnesota" to see descriptions of the archives of
the Minnesota Supreme Court.
- National Archives & Records Administration:
See the Guide to Federal Records in the National Archives of the United
States for information on the records of federal courts and the U.S.
Department of Justice. In addition, their their NARA Archival Information
Locator (NAIL) database has images of several important sets of source materials,
such as the Rosenberg Case Files, selected U.S. District Court files, 1685-1991,
and much more; check NAIL's What's New page.
- New Orleans Public Library, archives & special collections: includes finding aids to
records of colonial, territorial, state, and municipal court records. A
guide to genealogical sources includes further information about court records.
- North Carolina state archives: brief descriptions of state and county court records are available via the links to "Historical Research" and the MARS database.
- Pennsylvania state archives: listing of record groups leads to finding aids for various Pennsylvania courts and law enforcement agencies, from the colonial era to the present.
- Finding aids to records of the Texas Supreme Court, Court of Criminal Appeals, 3rd Court of Appeals.
- State Historical Society of
Wisconsin, Archives Division: search ArCat (their online catalog) for the subject "judicial records" to see descriptions of the archives of Wisconsin
court; descriptions for the papers of law firms and other manuscript collections
dealing with legal issues are also included.
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- Baylor
University Library, Baylor Collections of Political Materials: includes
finding aids to the papers of Texas Supreme Court Justice Charles W. Barrow,
and records from the impeachment trial of State District Judge O. P. Carrillo
of Duval County, Texas.
- Bowdoin College,
George J. Mitchell Papers: follow the "Finding Aid" link for a description
of the papers of the former Senator from Maine, including materials from
his service as U.S. District Judge.
- College of William
and Mary, Warren Burger Collection: The papers of Chief Justice Burger
will be closed to researchers until 2026. The site presently has a brief
description of the collection, with plans to expand.
- Cornell University Law
Library: descriptions of its Rare Books Collection and Trials Collection.
- Harvard Law Library,
Special Collections: finding aids to dozens of significant manuscript
collections (including Supreme Court Justices Brandeis, Cardozo and Frankfurter),
the Harvard Law School Archives, and early English legal manuscripts; plus
overviews of the Rare Book Collection, Modern Manuscripts Collection, Art
Collection, and the Red Set.
- University of Houston Law
Library: finding aids to the papers of John R. Brown, late chief judge
of the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals; the Judge John R. Brown Maritime
Law Collection; and the Frankel Rare Book Collection.
- University of
Idaho Special Collections: finding aids for several judges, attorneys,
law firms, and law-related organizations which were prominent in the history
and development of Idaho in the late 19th and 20th centuries. An overview
identifies some of the more significant collections.
- University of Louisville
Law Library: includes finding aids for the Louis Dembitz Brandeis Papers
and John Marshall Harlan Papers. See also the online exhibit, A
Legacy of Leadership: African American Pioneers in Kentucky Law.
- University of South Carolina
Law Library, South Carolina Legal History Collection: an overview of
the collections, together with biographical sketches & portraits of
major figures in the state's legal history.
- Stanford University,
Records of MALDEF (Mexican American Legal Defense & Education Fund):
archives documenting MALDEF's advocacy of civil and legal rights for Mexican
Americans from its founding in 1967.
- Thurgood Marshall
Law Library, University of Maryland, David Hoffman web site: an in-depth
examination of the career, writings, and thought of David Hoffman (1784-1854),
legal writer, author, and pioneer in American legal education who was the
first law professor at the University of Maryland. Also see the Thurgood Marshall Law Library's special collections website.
- University of Texas at Austin,
Tarlton Law Library Rare Books & Special Collections (your present location):
Includes descriptions of almost 80 archival collections, such as the papers
of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Tom C. Clark, other state & federal appellate
judges, deans & professors of the University of Texas School of Law,
Law School organizations, and Walton H. Hamilton (Yale law professor &
New Deal economist). Also features guides to resources on the Sweatt v.
Painter case, and Aztec & Maya law.
- University of Virginia Law
Library Special Collections: guides include finding aids for papers
of Supreme Court Justices Roger Brooke Taney and James Clark McReynolds,
as well as papers of many Virginia law professors, alumni, and judges.
- Washington & Lee University School
of Law, Lewis F. Powell, Jr. Archives: general description of the papers
of Justice Lewis F. Powell, Jr., plus an overview of the School of Law's
archives and manuscript collections of law faculty and important figures
in law and public service.
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- The American Radicalism
Collection, Michigan State University, offers scanned images of many
items in the collection, with regular additions. Access is via subject and
title lists. Of interest to legal historians are dozens of items published
by radical groups on the Rosenberg spy case, the Sacco-Vanzetti trial, the
Scottsboro Boys, civil rights, the Ku Klux Klan, and labor unions.
- The Amistad Case:
The National Archives presents digitized documents related to the U.S. Supreme
Court case of U.S. v. The Amistad (1841), in which the Court
freed a group of Africans who had taken over the Spanish slave ship on which
they had been imprisoned, and cleared the Africans of murder charges in
the death of the ship's captain and cook.
- The Avalon Project,
Yale Law School: "Digital documents relevant to the fields of Law, History,
Economics, Politics, Diplomacy and Government," ranging from the Code of
Hammurabi to Magna Carta, the Articles of Confederation, the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo,
and the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials. All documents transcribed and/or translated
in modern English.
- A Century of
Lawmaking for a New Nation: US Congressional Documents and Debates 1774-1873:
Part of the American Memory project at the Library of Congress. The initial
release in Mar. 1998 included full text of documents and debates from the
First and Second Congresses (1789-1793), totaling about 4,400 pages of documents.
Information can be browsed or searched.
- The Constitution
of the United States of America, Analysis and Interpretation: Annotations
of Cases Decided by the Supreme Court of the United States to June 29, 1992:
provided by the Library of Congress' Congressional Research Service, in
cooperation with the U.S. Senate and Government Printing Office (GPO). The
volume is both searchable and browsable, and contains annotated references
to Supreme Court decisions in their constitutional context. It is arranged
by article and amendment and is available in both plain-text and Adobe Acrobat
(.pdf) formats.
- Decisions of the 19 th -century Tasmanian Superior Courts:
This site covers a range of Tasmania's nineteenth century case law beginning with the first decisions of the Supreme Court of Van Diemen's Land, commencing in 1824.
- History
of Economic Thought, McMasters University: Includes the full text of
selected works by such prominent legal scholars as Cesare Beccaria, Jeremy
Bentham, Matthew Hale, Henry Sumner Maine, Frederic Maitland, and Paul Vinogradoff.
- New South Wales Superior Court
decisions, 1788-1899: Selected, edited and annotated by Prof. Bruce
Kercher, School of Law, Macquarie University, with the text taken from contemporary
newspapers and manuscript sources, and accessible via case and subject indexes.
These decisions fill out the generally skimpy published reports of New South
Wales appellate courts for this period; see Kercher's introduction.
- Oyez Oyez Oyez: digitized audio recordings
of U.S. Supreme Court oral arguments, from 1955 onward; updated regularly.
- Roman
Law: An experimental site, containing two extracts from the Corpus Iuris
Iustiniani with hypertext links to the corresponding glosses of Accursius.
Also present are biographical sketches of a few major Roman law writers.
Maintained by Thomas Rufner, University of Tuebingen.
- Supreme Court Decisions,
1937-1975: full text of decisions, searchable, at the Government Printing
Office's web site. "The database is made available to the public as a finding
aid to the 'official' version in the United States Reports, therefore, GPO
does not guarantee the authenticity or completeness of the data."
- Supreme Court Opinions,
1937-Present: Cases are browsable by volume number or year; searchable
by citation, title and full text of the opinions; and also include hypertext
links. On the Findlaw site, maintained by the Northern California Assn.
of Law Librarians.
- Unreported Decisions of the Privy Council on appeal from the Australian colonies before 1850:
This site provides surviving archival material regarding 17 unreported appeals from the Australian colonies to the appeals committees or the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council from 1809 to 1850.
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