Making of Modern Law: Primary Sources

Pressure Groups chart
From the 1945 Scholastic publication Congress at Work: A Graphic Story of How our Laws are Made and of the Men Who Make Them

The Library has recently purchased a supplement to the database Making of Modern Law: Primary Sources, which is a collection of digitized historical legal material, including published records of the American colonies, documents published by state constitutional conventions, state codes, city charters, and more.  The collection previously covered material from 1620 through 1926, and it has now been expanded to cover up through 1970 and now includes more than 3.3 million pages. The database is full-text searchable, and all of the documents are available in PDF format.

Legal history researchers may also find useful the other databases in the Making of Modern Law Series: U.S. Supreme Court Records & BriefsLegal Treatises, 1800-1926, and Trials, 1600-1926.