Researching the legal past online
The Law Library’s guide to American Legal History Sources Online includes links to a wide variety of primary and secondary sources on American law and American history, mostly from the 18th and 19th centuries. The Legal History: Sources guide has a section on Roman Law and full-text sources such as Statutes of the Realm (laws of England from 1235-1713), The Making of Modern Law: Trials, 1600-1926, The Making of Modern Law: Legal Treatises, 1800-1926 (American and British law books), and U.S. Supreme Court Briefs and Records (1832-1978). University researchers now have access to Gale/Cengage’s The Making of Modern Law: Primary Sources content expanded from 1620 to 1970. The LLMC Digital database includes historical legal documents from U.S. and foreign jurisdictions, including a growing collection for British Africa.
The Legal Classics library via HeinOnline goes from Pierino Belli’s 1563 Treatise on Military Matters and Warfare [De Re Militari et Bello Tractatus] , Hugo Grotius’ 1604 Commentary on the Law of Prize and Booty [De Jure Praedae Commentarius] to Chester James Antieau’s 2001 Our Two Centuries of Law and Life 1775-1975 – The Work of the Supreme Court and the Impact of Both Congress and Presidents . World Constitutions Illustrated is very useful for locating historical constitutions from all countries. Also now available via HeinOnline is one of the Law Library’s newest subscription databases, the History of International Law library. This database features classic works on international law by Vattel, Grotius, Pufendorf, Bijnkershoek, Vitoria, and Gentili.
General resources can have legal history content. For example, the Bibliothèque National de France’s Gallica digital library includes ebooks on the history of French law and justice. Early Dutch Books Online has some law-related titles. The Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes has constitution-related e-content. Broad databases such as Gale’s Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO) and Chadwyck-Healey’s Early English Books Online (EEBO)(1473-1700) include old law books.
Other collections of historical legal texts online are PixeLegis (Spain), Ius Lusitaniae – Fontes Históricas do Direito Português , the Biblioteca Jurídica Virtual (Mexico), and the Portal Iberoamericano de Historia del Derecho (PIHD).
To keep up with new resources and news, monitor the Legal History Blog , Yale Law Library’s Rare Books Blog, the Rechtsgeschiednis Blog, and check our guides and others such as Oxford’s Legal History: Common Law Tradition and Texas Tarlton Law Library’s legal history research guides. Berkeley’s Robbins Collection also includes educational exhibits and guides such as Roman Legal Tradition and the Compilation of Justinian.
