Jamail Center for Legal Research
Tarlton Law Library

Rare Books & Special Collections

Montefiore's Commercial Dictionary (1804), the first U.S. law dictionary.

Rare Book Collection

The Rare Book Collection supports legal education and research at The University of Texas by providing a secure home to a large and valuable collection of rare law books. It actively develops several areas through gifts, purchases, and transfers from the general collection. These include:

• Texas law: one of the most comprehensive collections of Texas law in existence. Historic Texas constitutions and constitutional convention journals are now online in our Texas Constitutions Digitization Project. Also available are the laws of Spain and Mexico that governed the region before 1836.
• Law Dictionary Collection: This frequently used and growing collection contains dozens of early American, English, European, and Latin American dictionaries, including the Law Library's Millionth Volume, the Jamail Rastell Dictionary, and its oldest book, the Vocabularius Utriusque Iuris (Venice 1483).
• Law-Related Fine Press Collection: A unique collection of law-related texts produced by outstanding book designers & printers of the past 150 years, such as Bruce Rogers, the Grabhorn Press, and the Doves Press. See Fine Press Books in Tarlton Law Library's Rare Books & Special Collections (a PDF file) for current holdings.
• John Selden: Works of the 17th-century English attorney regarded as the first scientific historian of English law.
• Tichborne Collection: Books, broadsides, and trial records of the notorious 1870s trials of the Tichborne Claimant, who attempted to pass himself off as the long-lost heir to an English fortune.
• Mildred A. O'Donohoe Collection of Williston Fish's Last Will: Chicago attorney Williston Fish wrote a sentimental mock will in 1898 for Harper's Weekly, and it has moved generations of readers ever since, inspiring private press editions, children's books, and even Irving Berlin. Generous support from the Estate of Mildred A. O'Donohoe funds the acquisition of every available edition. See Michael Widener, Williston Fish's Last Will, UT Law, Winter 2006, at 64.
• Inns of Court Collection: Books documenting the history and buildings of the English law guilds.

Other strengths include American and English legal materials (treatises, abridgments, and case reports); Spanish, Mexican, Roman, Scottish, canon, & international law; legal biographies; and law & popular culture.

History of the collection

A number of volumes are from the donations made by the Law School's original faculty, Professors O.M. Roberts and R.S. Gould, in 1884 to establish the Law Library. Significant donations since then include those from the Carswell Company, 1921 (over 1,100 volumes, primarily English nominative reporters), Judge Robert Lynn Batts, 1935 (early English and Spanish law books), Harry Gammel, son of the famous Texas book dealer & publisher H.P.N. Gammel, 1946 (Spanish, Mexican, and European law), the Texas Supreme Court Library, 1940s-1970s (16th-19th century volumes of Roman, canon, French, and Spanish law; see Michael Widener, Hispanic & European Law Books in the Old Texas Supreme Court Library, a PDF file), and the bequest of the Robert Lynn Batts library by his daughter Margaret Tobin Batts (over 100 volumes of English, Spanish & American law, transferred from the Center for American History, 1993). Since 1997, Chauncey D. Leake, Jr. (UT Law 1955) has funded the purchase of many early European law books and law-related fine press books. A generous gift from Joseph D. Jamail (UT Law 1953) in 1999 funded the purchase of the Law Library's Millionth Volume, the Jamail Rastell Dictionary, and also the acquisition of 64 volumes from the Oct. 2001 auction of the Birmingham Law Society's library in London (see a catalogue of the volumes acquired in a PDF file). Antiquarian law dictionaries became a new collecting field in 1987 when the Oxford Law Dictionary project was based at the Law School. As of August 2004, the Rare Book Collection contained close to 7,800 volumes.

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