Henry G. Manne, one of the founders of the Law & Economics movement, celebrates his 80th birthday on May 10, 2008. To mark this event, his sister-in-law Beverly M. Manne of Houston, Texas, has funded the acquisition of a book in his honor for the Yale Law Library's Rare Book Collection.

Professor Manne, Dean Emeritus of the George Mason University School of Law, is a distinguished alumnus of the Yale Law School (LL.M. ’53, S.J.D. ’66). His 1966 S.J.D. thesis at Yale Law School, Inside Information and the Entrepreneur, was the basis for his widely reviewed and controversial book, Insider Trading and the Stock Market (New York: Free Press, 1966). He is also known as an innovator in U.S. legal education.

The book that Ms. Manne and I selected to honor Professor Manne is Thomas Mortimer’s Every Man His Own Broker: or, a Guide to Exchange-Alley (London, 1765). This vade mecum for investors includes an overview of the laws governing brokers. Elizabeth Hennessy described Mortimer and his book in Coffee House to Cyber Market: Two Hundred Years of the London Stock Exchange (2001):

One of the most knowledgeable and persistent critics of brokers’ trade in securities was Thomas Mortimer whose book Every Man His Own Broker appeared in fourteen editions between 1761 and 1801, and was translated into German, Dutch, French and Italian. According to his own account he wrote because of an unhappy experience at Jonathan’s in 1756, and the work is certainly hostile to jobbers and speculators; like many of his contemporaries he was deeply perturbed by what he saw as unnecessary trading in Government funds. However, his detailed advice to the public on how to buy and sell successfully gives one of the best pictures of stock broking in the second half of the eighteenth century.

Professor Manne has provided an excellent capsule history of the Law & Economics movement in his online essay, An Intellectual History of the George Mason University School of Law. See also the biographical sketch of Professor Manne at the end.

Thanks to my fellow Texan, Ms. Beverly Manne, for her generous and thoughtful gift. And to Professor Manne, Happy 80th Birthday!

MIKE WIDENER
Rare Book Librarian

History of the Oberlin-Wellington Rescue (1859) is a lengthy and detailed account of the arrest of John, a fugitive slave belonging to John G. Bacon of Kentucky who was residing in Oberlin, Ohio. John was liberated by a band Ohio citizens, led by Simeon Bushnell and Charles Langston. The two leaders were put on trial for interfering with the arrest of a fugitive slave, and the trial was followed by Ohio indictments against the slavehunters on kidnapping charges. All these events are narrated in detail in the 280-page book, as well as the mass meetings organized throughout the North by abolitionists to drum up support for the rescuers.

History of the Oberlin-Wellington Rescue demonstrates that accounts of fugitive slave trials had become profitable publishing ventures. It was produced by a consortium of three publishers (John P. Jewett and Co. of Boston, Henry P.B. Jewett of Cleveland, and Sheldon and Co. of New York City). The American Antiquarian Society has a broadside advertisement for the book:

"AGENTS WANTED! To sell The History of the Oberlin-Wellington Rescue!! A book that everybody wants! And will buy at the first opportunity! ... We want agents enough to canvass every school-district in Ohio, and every state north of Mason's and Dixon's line. So saleable a book on such lucrative terms is offered only once in a long while, as everybody knows. Now is the time! Arrangements can be made for agencies west of Cleveland with H.P.B. Jewett, Cleveland; eastward, with John P. Jewett & Co., Boston. Any inquiries answered by Jacob R. Shipherd, Oberlin."

The American Memory site at the Library of Congress provides the full text and images of History of the Oberlin-Wellington Rescue. 

[From Race on the Stand: African-American History in the Law Library’s American Trials Collection, presented Feb. 20, 2008, at the Sterling Memorial Library, Yale University.]

MIKE WIDENER
Rare Book Librarian

 

 

The Arrest, Trial, and Release of Daniel Webster, A Fugitive Slave (Philadelphia: Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society, 1859) is a journalistic narrative. The anonymous author records not only the trial, but the pre-trial proceedings, conversations with the sheriff, and the actions of the crowds that were on hand. The pamphlet provides evidence on the communications networks of abolitionists and how they rallied supporters to intervene in the proceedings. It preserves the voices of the participants, including Mr. Webster, who won his freedom in a hearing before a U.S. Commissioner.

Like many other accounts of fugitive slave trials, this pamphlet was published by an interest group, the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society. It was inexpensive, quickly produced, and easily mailed.

[From Race on the Stand: African-American History in the Law Library’s American Trials Collection, presented Feb. 20, 2008, at the Sterling Memorial Library, Yale University.]

MIKE WIDENER
Rare Book Librarian

Early American trials is one of the collecting priorities for the Yale Law Library's Rare Book Collection. In the past two years we added over a hundred titles to an already large collection. About two dozen of these were trials involving African Americans, and nearly all are the only copies at Yale.

Trials involving African Americans figure prominently in the collection, because of their prominent role in American history and their continuing interest for researchers. I gave a presentation on them, Race on the Stand: African-American History in the Law Library’s American Trials Collection, on Feb. 20, 2008, for a Black History Month event organized by the Standing Committee on Professional Awareness of the Yale University Library.

Trial accounts are valuable and fascinating documents for several reasons. By recording testimony and court debates, they capture voices from the past. In contrast to appellate proceedings -- where lawyers and judges are talking among themselves -- trials capture a broader range of voices. Trial accounts are unique primary sources, capturing the proceedings in lower courts that usually can’t be found anywhere else. Through testimony and fact-finding, trials provide a window on social conditions, living conditions, and attitudes.

For African-American history in particular, battles over slavery and race were often fought in the courts.

What do I mean by "American trials"?  They are typically small, cheaply produced pamphlets like the 8-page item shown at right, Case of the Slave Isaac Brown: An Outrage Exposed (1847?).

The case itself involved a trumped-up charge that an African American in Pennsylvania was a fugitive from justice. Brown had been punished for an assault two years before in Maryland, and then sold to a planter in Louisiana. Somehow he made it to Pennsylvania. His former owner in Maryland obtained an arrest warrant. Two attorneys took Brown's case and won his freedom. The case itself shows how both pro-slavery and anti-slavery groups made of the courts to further their goals.

The pamphlet itself demonstrates how trial pamphlets were used as propaganda, and also to publicize the tricks used by slave catchers. The anonymous author concludes:

"The case of Isaac Brown shows with what facility any honest citizen of Pennsylvania may be seized under a requisition from the Executive of another State, on some false and malicious charge ..., banished from his native soil, tried among strangers before a foreign tribunal, and convicted and punished by the perjury of those who committed the crime, and who escape by fastening it upon him. It is a lesson to our Governor, our Courts and our People."

Abolitionists are here telling their readers: "This could happen to YOU." They argued that slavery laws threatened the white population as well as African Americans.

The American Memory site at the Library of Congress provides the full text and images of The Case of the Slave Isaac Brown.

I'll be posting other examples from my presentation in the next several days. 

MIKE WIDENER
Rare Book Librarian

One focus of my collecting efforts is law books with illustrations. These illustrations are often portraits of the authors or allegorical images, but I am especially interested in illustrations used to describe legal concepts.

Tree diagrams have been used since the Middle Ages, particularly in legal texts from the European continent on Roman, canon, or feudal law. They were most commonly used to diagram family relationships: trees of consanguinity dealt with relationships by blood, while trees of affinity described relationships by marriage.

In 16th-century law books, trees were often used to describe other legal concepts and relationships. The "arbor dividui et individui" at right is one example. It comes from Arbor dividui et individui by Martin Sanchez (1538), bound at the end of Luca da Penne's commentary on the Code of Justinian. The "arbor dividui et individui" diagrams different types of legal actions regarding stipulations and contracts having to do with divisible and indivisible things (thanks to my colleague Jennifer Nelson, reference librarian at the Robbins Collection, UC-Berkeley, for deciphering the meaning).

See my gallery of legal "trees" on Flickr for other examples.

The Arbor dividui et individui by Martin Sanchez is quite rare. The first edition (Toulouse, 1519) is held by the Robbins Collection, the Bavarian State Library, and France's Bibliotheque Nationale. The only other copy of our 1538 edition is at the Baden-Württemberg State Library. Our copy is part of the Roman-Canon Law Collection of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York.

MIKE WIDENER
Rare Book Librarian

A hearty thanks to Stephen Ferguson, Curator of Rare Books at the Princeton University Library, for providing the answer to my Provenance puzzle #1. The stamp is a portrait of Augustus, Elector of Saxony (1526-1586). Stephen used Google Books to find a reference to the stamp in Konrad Haebler's Rollen- und plattenstempel des XVI. jahrhunderts (Leipzig: O. Harrassowitz, 1928-1929), vol. 2, pp. 79-81.

See the Wikipedia article on Augustus of Saxony, where you will learn that Augustus, a Lutheran, played an important and influential role as a peacemaker in the religious conflicts of the early German Reformation.

The stamp is on the front cover of our copy of Practica eximia atque omnium aliarum praestantissima by Giovanni Pietro Ferrari (Frankfurt: Sigmund Feyerabend, 1581), part of the Roman-Canon Law Collection of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York.

Additional images of the covers are in my Flickr gallery in the "Provenance markings" set.

Finally, check out Stephen Ferguson's excellent blog, Rare Book Collections @ Princeton, a favorite of mine.

MIKE WIDENER
Rare Book Librarian
 

The Law and Politics Book Review, one of my favorite electronic journals, has just put out a special issue on Legal Fiction, with reviews of 22 American, British, and European novels from the 19th to 21st centuries. The goal of the editors was "to find out how others who teach courses in political science, criminal justice, or law use novels in their teaching." The standard law-and-literature canon is well represented -- Dickens' Bleak House, Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, Kafka's The Trial -- but there were a few surprises as well, including two science fiction titles (Isaac Asimov's I, Robot and Aldous Huxley's Brave New World) and Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.Highly recommended for librarians and collectors interested in the law-and-literature or law-and-popular-culture fields.

MIKE WIDENER
Rare Book Librarian

There are several articles of interest to legal historians and legal bibliographers in the latest issue of The Green Bag (N.S. vol. 11, no. 2, Winter 2008). These include Michael Hoeflich's "Law Blanks & Form Books", part of Hoeflich's ongoing interest in legal ephemera (see also his blog, TheLegalAntiquarian. In addition, there's a reprint of an extremely useful 1961 bibliographic essay, "History of the Printed Archetype of the Constitution of the United States of America" by Denys P. Myers. This article is preceeded by "Which is the Constitution?" by Ross E. Davies, discussing the issue of determining the authoritative text of the Constitution, an issue which has come up in the recent U.S. Supreme Court case on gun control, District of Columbia v. Heller.

On a different front, Fabio Arcila, Jr. demonstrates the usefulness of early American justice of the peace manuals in his new article, "In the Trenches: Searches and the Misunderstood Common-Law History of Suspicion and Probable Cause," University of Pennsylvania Journal of Constitutional Law 10:1 (Dec. 2007), 1-63. Librarians and rare law book enthusiasts will want to check the bibliography of American j.p. manuals that Arcila includes as an appendix.

MIKE WIDENER
Rare Book Librarian

A hearty thanks to my Anglophile friend, Mr. Harold I. Boucher of San Francisco (LL.B. Boalt, 1930, Honorary O.B.E.), for his gift of two fine 17th-century English legal texts to the Rare Book Collection. Mr. Boucher is a longtime advocate for legal history as an integral component of law school curricula.

The gifts include Essex's Innocency and Honour Vindicated: Or, Murther, Subornation, Perjury, and Oppression, Justly Charg'd on the Murtherers of That Noble Lord and True Patriot, Arthur (Late) Earl of Essex by Lawrence Braddon (London: Printed for the Author, 1690).The Earl of Essex had been imprisoned for plotting a revolt, and the attorney Lawrence Braddon here argues that Essex's death was a murder and not a suicide as the authorities claimed. Braddon's little pamphlet earned him a trial on slander charges (we also have the account of his trial), and he remained in prison until William III's landing. Our copy includes the frontispiece, often missing, of the crime scene in the Tower of London (see below).

Mr. Boucher's other gift is John Brydall's Jura Coronae: His Majesties Royal Rights and Prerogatives Asserted, Against Papal Usurpations, and all other Anti-Monarchical Attempts and Practices (London: Printed for George Dawes . . . against Lincolns-Inn-Gate, 1680). Brydall was a conservative, monarchist barrister who published a number of legal tracts. This particular book was printed just a few steps from Wildy & Sons, Law Booksellers, where I had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Boucher in person in 2002, through the good offices of Roy Heywood, Wildy's rare book specialist.

Thanks also to Meyer Boswell Books of San Francisco for its help in arranging this special gift.

MIKE WIDENER
Rare Book Librarian

This armorial stamp graces the front and back covers of several tall folios from the Roman-Canon Law Collection of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York.I have no idea what library this stamp is from, but I have a couple of clues. The binding style (stamped pigskin over boards, with rounded backs) is typically German. Several knowledgeable folks say that the initials also suggest a German library.If you can shed any light or provide any suggestions, please let me know.On my Flickr gallery, in the "Provenance Markings" set, I have posted an image that shows more of the cover and the tooling. Following are the titles bearing this stamp (click on the title to see the full record in our online catalog, MORRIS):

Luca da Penne, Lectura ... Super tribus libris codicis (Lyon, 1538) [with] Martin Sanchez, Arbor dividui et  individui (s.l., 1538). (The volume shown here).

Alessandro Tartagni, In Digestum vetus lecturae [with] Lecturae in Digestum novum (Lyon, 1567).

Alessandro Tartagni, In codicem Iustinianeum commentariorum tomus primus et secundus [with] In infortiatum commentaria (Lyon,1567).

Primum volumen[-volumen xvii] tractatuum ex variis iuris interpretibus collectorum (Lyon, 1549; 18 vols. in 11).

MIKE WIDENER
Rare Book Librarian
Lillian Goldman Law Library

This rubbing is from the front cover of one of the volumes from the Roman-Canon Law Collection of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York. I would be grateful if someone could help me identify this portrait and/or the coat of arms on the back cover (see below), to learn who was the book's original owner.

The text below the portrait reads: "VIRTVTES * ANIMI * MAIESTAS / EXPLICATORIS * AVGVSTI * VVLTVS / INSPICE * NVMEN * HABENT".

The book itself is Practica eximia atque omnium aliarum praestantissima by Giovanni Pietro Ferrari (Frankfurt: Sigmund Feyerabend, 1581). The book is bound in stamped pigskin over pasteboard, and appears to be a German binding. Additional images of the covers are in my Flickr gallery in the "Provenance" set.

Although the online resources available at the Provenance Information page provided by the Consortium of European Research Libraries didn't answer my question, I highly recommend them for others with questions like mine.

 Thanks to Brian Mendez for the rubbings and Joanne Kittredge for the scans.

MIKE WIDENER
Rare Book Librarian
Lillian Goldman Law Library

 

 

 

 

I presented examples from our canon and Roman law collections to the 40 students in Professor James Whitman's "Western Legal Tradition" class on March 31, 2008. The books represented many of the major genres of European legal literature from the medieval and early modern periods. They included a medieval canon law manuscript (the Clementines, 14th century); an early incunable of Justinian's Institutes (Institutiones Justiniani, Basel 1476, with an early reader's tree diagram of Roman law concepts), an early German translation of the Institutes (Frankfurt 1536, the only U.S. copy in WorldCat), Azo's famous commentary on the Code (Lectura Azonis, Paris 1581), Bartolus' Consilia, or legal opinions (Venice 1590), an early guide to court procedure (Ordo iudiciarius, Paris 1515), a potpourri of legal texts for students and practitioners (Modus legendi abbreviaturas : Tractatus iudiciorum Bartholi : tractatus renuntiationm beneficiorum in publicis instrumentis : processus Sathane : ars notariatus, Cologne 1505), and finally, a charming little study guide for law students (Repertorium Aureum, Cologne 1495), which contains a mnemonic poem to help students memorize canon law texts.

Thanks to Professor Whitman for the invitation, and to the students for their questions and interest. I had a great time, and I learned a lot as well. Highly recommended: Whitman's article, "A Note Note on the Medieval Division of the Digest," 59 Tijdschrift voor Rechtsgeschiedenis 269 (1991).

MIKE WIDENER
Rare Book Librarian

Professor James Whitman and two students from his "Western
Legal Traditions" class examine the Lectura Azonis (1581).

The Lillian Goldman Law Library has a splendid rare book collection, and I am privileged to work with it. The Rare Books Blog enables me to share some of its riches with the wider world. I will post news about recent acquisitions and events. Rare book librarians like myself are always discovering interesting new things about our collections, and I will be sharing some of these. I may also enlist you, my readers, in making discoveries.

 I welcome your comments and questions.

Regards,

MIKE WIDENER
Rare Book Librarian
Lillian Goldman Law Library
Yale Law School