About Making of Modern Law: Legal Treatises, 1800-1926

Subject
Legal Treatises comprises more than 21,000 works from the nineteenth — and early twentieth-centuries on British Commonwealth and American law, with 14,900 titles from the nineteenth and 7,100 titles for the years 1900 to 1926. It covers nearly every aspect of American and British Commonwealth law, encompassing a range of analytical, theoretical, and practical literature, some very rare. The monographs and materials in Legal Treatises include casebooks, local practice manuals, books on legal form, works for lay readers, pamphlets, letters, and speeches. The collection is of interest to scholars and patrons interested in domestic and international law, legal history, business and economics, politics and government, national defense, criminology, religion, education, labor and social welfare and military justice.

A legal treatise is a monograph or other writing about the law, rather than a transcript of actual laws or actual cases. To describe what legal treatises are, it is necessary to state what they are not: They are not trial transcripts, state documents, collections of laws, or judicial reports. They are secondary source materials that analyze and examine the law, usually a specific law or subject area, encompassing a range of analytical, theoretical, and practical literature.

Works from key legal thinkers including Bentham, Austin, Maine, Kent, Story and Holmes are present. The majority of the material is from the Harvard Law School Library. The collection is organized into separate units of British and American Treatises, enabling users to trace the evolution of modern law in Great Britain, Ireland and the United States

Sources
Because Harvard University has the largest collection of American and British legal treatises, the majority of Nineteenth Century Legal Treatises came from Harvard's holdings. Yale University provided additional titles, followed by titles from York University and Columbia University. Most of the titles for Twentieth Century Legal Treatises were sourced from Harvard and Yale but 21 other institutions in the United States and Britain contributed small numbers of titles.

The collection is based on both bibliographic sources and advisor/selector recommendations. There is no one definitive bibliographic source for legal treatises; indeed, the collection may well comprise the only definitive bibliographic source of this type of material. The collection was sourced from a number of bibliographic sources, including:

Maxwell, W. Harold and Leslie F. Maxwell (comps.) A Legal Bibliography of the British Commonwealth of Nations. 2nd ed. London: Sweet & Maxwell, 1955-64, 7 vols. Currently published as Sweet and Maxwell's Legal Bibliography of the British Commonwealth of Nations. 2nd ed. London: Rees, 1989-

Sweet & Maxwell's Complete Law Book Catalogue. London: Sweet & Maxwell, 1925-1949. 7 vols.

Wallach, Kate, "The Publication of Legal Treatises in American from 1800-1830." Law Library Journal. Vol. 45. Pp. 136-48.

Parish, Jenni. "Law Books and Legal Publishing in America, 1760-1840." Law Library Journal. Vol. 72. Pp. 355-452

Cohen, Morris L. Bibliography of Early American Law. Buffalo, N.Y. : W.S. Hein & Co., 1998. 6 v.
Taylor, Betty W., and Robert J. Munro. American Law Publishing, 1860-1900. Dobbs Ferry, NY : Glanville Publications, c1984. 4 v.

These, combined with a number of key articles in the Law Library Journal by other bibliographers, all contributed to create a comprehensive road map to U.S. and British legal treatises. Key advisors to the collection included David Ferris, Curator of Rare Books and Manuscripts, Harvard Law Library; Morris L. Cohen, Professor Emeritus of Law and Professional Lecturer in Law, and former Librarian of the Yale Law School Library; and Balfour Halevy, former Law Librarian at York University.

Coverage
Varies by publication; broadly 1800 - 1926.

Provider
Gale Cengage

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Access
NSU faculty, students and staff:  On campus and remote access.
General Public and registered alumni and Broward County patrons: Walk in access within the library.

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Revised: 7/31/2008.