I was pleased to welcome about 30 freshmen from Yale's Directed Studies program to the Paskus-Danziger Rare Book Room on November 4. They were accompanied by three of the Directed Studies faculty: Edwin Duval (French), Paul Freedman (History), and Justin Zaremby (Yale College and Law '10).

Directed Studies provides an interdisciplinary study of Western civilization to 125 selected Yale freshmen via three year-long courses -- literature, philosophy, and historical & political thought -- that focus on the central texts of Western civilization.

We viewed several books and manuscripts from among the foundational texts of European and English law, and how these texts shaped and were shaped by legal education. From Europe there was a 13th-century compilation of the Institutes, Code, and Novels of Justinian, and a 14th-century manuscript of the Clementines from the Corpus Juris Canonici, which show the development of the gloss as an outgrowth of the law lectures at the university in Bologna. The Institutes themselves had been promulgated by the Roman emperor Justinian in the 6th century as a textbook for learning Roman law. Likewise for canon law, the Decretum of Gratian was not merely a compilation of papal legislation, but a tool for teaching canon law at Bologna. Early printed editions of Justinian's Institutes (1516) and the Liber Sextus (1514) show how the structure of text-and-gloss shaped the layout of early printed law books. Legal humanists later stripped away the medieval gloss, but an 18th-century scholar replaced the gloss with his own study notes in an interleaved copy of the Institutes.

University-trained jurists in Europe had to plow through every line of Justinian's texts or the Corpus Juris Canonici to earn their doctorates in law. In England, by contrast, lawyers did not study English common law in universities but at the Inns of Court, and they did not study foundation texts as the Europeans did. On view for the students was one of our two 13th-century manuscripts of Bracton, the text that tried to do for English law what Justinian's Institutes did for Roman law, but failed. Education in the common law was practice-based; students attended hearings in the royal courts and studied cases from the Year Books, the anonymous medieval case reports that focused on procedure rather than outcomes. The first text written for English law students was Littleton's Tenures, a little treatise on land law that ws reprinted over seventy times across four centuries. Sir Edward Coke's commentary on Littleton once again adapted the device of the gloss, with Coke's dense and learned notes almost swallowing up Littleton's original text. The copy of Coke on Littleton (1633) that the students viewed has additional layers of extensive manuscript notes, attributed to the English author Samuel Butler (1612-1680), author of a best-selling satire on the Puritans, Hudibras, and Butler's patron William de Longueville (1639-1721).

The book that revolutionized common-law legal education, especially for do-it-yourself'ers in the early United States, was Sir William Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England, the first book to give a comprehensive overview of English law in prose that an educated layman could digest. On view for the students was the 1790 edition of the Commentaries printed in Worcester, Mass., by the pioneering American printer Isaiah Thomas, as well as a student notebook (New England?, 1810?), where the student's geography notes are followed by "Questions and Answers upon Law: Blackstone's Commentaries."

My thanks to Justin Zaremby for organizing this visit. The students enjoyed the chance to see the books up close and actually handle them. Let's do it again!

MIKE WIDENER
Rare Book Librarian

The following select bibliography includes the sources consulted in the preparation of this exhibit. The image is of the opening leaf of the Liber Assisarum, a collection of Year Book cases from the reign of Edward III (manuscript in Law French, ca. 1450).

English law reports

• Abbott, L. W. Law Reporting in England 1485-1585. London: Athlone Press, 1973.
• Baker, J. H. "Coke's note-books and the sources of his reports." Cambridge Law Journal 30:1 (Apr. 1972), 59-86.
• Baker, J. H. "Records, reports and the origins of case-law in England," in Judicial Records, Law Reports, and the Growth of Case Law (J. H. Baker, ed.; Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1989), 15-46.
• Bolland, William Craddock. A Manual of Year Book Studies. Cambridge [England]: University Press, 1925. [Reprinted Holmes Beach, Fla.: Wm. W. Gaunt & Sons, 1986.]
• Fox, John Charles. A Handbook of English Law Reports from the Last Quarter of the Eighteenth Century to the Year 1865, with Biographical Notes of Judges and Reporters. London : Butterworth & Co., 1913.
• Heard, Franklin Fiske. Curiosities of the Law Reporters. Boston: Lee & Shepard ; New York: Lee, Shepard, & Dillingham, 1871. [2nd ed.: Boston: Soule and Bugbee, 1881.]
• Luther, Peter. "The Year Books." Law Librarian 13:2 (Aug. 1982), 19-22.
• Matthews, Elizabeth W. Seventeenth Century English Law Reports in Folio: Description of Selected Imprints. Buffalo: W.S. Hein, 1986.
• Plucknett, T. F. T. "The genesis of Coke's Reports." Cornell Law Quarterly 27:2 (Feb. 1942), 190-213.
• Powell, Damian. "Coke in context: early modern legal observation and Sir Edward Coke's reports." Journal of Legal History 21:3 (Dec. 2000), 33-53.
• Stebbings, Chantal, ed. Law Reporting in Britain. London: Hambledon Press, 1995.
• Veeder, Van Vechten. "The English Reports, 1292-1865." Harvard Law Review 15:1 (May 1901), 1-25; 15:2 (June 1901), 109-117.
• Wallace, John William. The Reporters: Arranged and Characterized with Incidental Remarks. 4th ed. Boston: Soule & Bugbee, 1882. [Reprinted Buffalo, N.Y.: W.S. Hein, 1995.]

American law reports

• Aumann, Francis R. "American law reports: yesterday and today." Ohio State University Law Journal 4:3 (June 1938), 331-345.
• Briceland, A. V. "Ephraim Kirby: pioneer of American law reporting, 1789." American Journal of Legal History 16 (Oct. 1972), 297.
• Duffey, Denis P., Jr. "Genre and authority: the rise of case reporting in the early United States." Chicago-Kent Law Review 74:1 (Winter 1998), 263-275.
• Harrington, William G. “A brief history of computer-assisted legal research.” Law Library Journal 77:3 (1984-85), 543-556.
• Joyce, Craig. "The rise of the Supreme Court Reporter: an institutional perspective on Marshall Court ascendancy." Michigan Law Review 83:5 (Apr. 1985), 1291-1391.
• Joyce, Craig. "Wheaton v. Peters: the untold story of the early reporters." Yearbook (Supreme Court Historical Society) 1985, 35-92.
• LaPiana, William P. "Dusty books and living history: why all those old state reports really matter." Law Library Journal 81:1 (Winter 1989), 33-39.
• Surrency, Erwin C. "Law reports in the United States." American Journal of Legal History 25:1 (Jan. 1981), 48-66.
• Young, T. J., Jr. "Look at American law reporting in the 19th century." Law Library Journal 68 (Aug. 1975), 294-306.

General works

• Holdsworth, William Searle. A History of English Law. 17 vols. London: Sweet & Maxwell, 1966-72.
• Langbein, John H., Renée Lettow Lerner, & Bruce P. Smith. History of the Common Law: The Development of Anglo-American Legal Institutions. Forthcoming 2009, Aspen Publishers.
• Simpson, A.W.B., ed. Biographical Dictionary of the Common Law. London: Butterworths, 1984.
  
• Woxland, Thomas A., & Patti J. Ogden. Landmarks in American Legal Publishing: An Exhibit Catalog. [St. Paul, Minn.?:] West Publishing Co., [1989?].

MIKE WIDENER
Rare Book Librarian

"Landmarks of Law Reporting" is on display April through October 2009 in the Rare Book Exhibition Gallery, Level L2, Lillian Goldman Law Library, Yale Law School.

Case reports are a fundamental source for the study and practice of law in the Anglo-American common law system. "Landmarks in Law Reporting," the Spring 2009 exhibition from the Lillian Goldman Law Library's Rare Book Collection, illustrates the development of law reporting from the Middle Ages to modern times.

The exhibit begins with a manuscript collection of cases from the reign of Edward III, copied in about 1450. Also on display are first editions of the reports of Edmund Plowden (1571), considered the first modern-style reports) and Sir Edward Coke (1600), perhaps the most influential reports). Other "firsts" include the first American case reports (Ephraim Kirby's 1789 reports of Connecticut cases) and the first U.S. Supreme Court reports (Dallas' Reports, 1798).

Recurring themes in the exhibition include the gradual transformation from manuscript to print, the growth of legal publishing, the connections between law reporting and legal education, and the growing demands by lawyers for timely, well-organized reports.

The Rare Books Exhibition Gallery is located in the lower level of the Lillian Goldman Law Library (Level L2), directly in front of the Paskus-Danziger Rare Book Reading Room. For those unable to visit the exhibit in person, stay tuned to the following postings here on the Yale Law Library Rare Books Blog.

MIKE WIDENER
Rare Book Librarian

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thanks to the following for their assistance and advice in the research and preparation of this exhibit:

• Morris L. Cohen, Professor Emeritus of Law, Yale Law School
• John H. Langbein, Sterling Professor of Law and Legal History, Yale Law School
• Sabrina Sondhi, Special Collections Librarian, Arthur W. Diamond Law Library, Columbia University

Additional help in mounting the exhibit came from Brian Mendez and Fred Shapiro (Lillian Goldman Law Library), Joanne Kittredge (Yale Law School), and Emma Molina Widener (University of New Haven).

"Landmarks of Law Reporting" is on display April through October 2009 in the Rare Book Exhibition Gallery, Level L2, Lillian Goldman Law Library, Yale Law School.

Image: Volume 2 of Alexander James Dallas, Reports of Cases Ruled and Adjudged in the Several Courts of the United States, and of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, 1798), containing the first reports of U.S. Supreme Court cases.

Here are a few of the highlights from our acquisitions in the past three months.

For our growing collection of illustrated law books:

• Quadruvium ecclesie (Paris, 1509) by Johann Hugonis de Sletstat (a.k.a. Johann Hug), considered the first text on German constitutional law; only one other copy in the U.S. (Robbins Collection). See the image at right.
  
• The first edition in German of Damhoudere’s Praxis rerum criminalium (Frankfurt, 1565), a standard work on the criminal law of northern Europe with woodcuts illustrating crimes and criminal procedure; the only U.S. copy.
• Juristische Ergötzlichkeiten vom Jungfrauen-Rechte (Frankfurt & Leipzig, 1715) bound with Juristische Ergötzlichkeiten vom Jung-Gesellen Rechte (Frankfurt & Leipzig, 1723), a pair of little books on law for young women and young men, respectively, with charming frontispieces; the only U.S. copies.
• Two standard works, Justinian’s Institutes (1516) and the Liber Sextus (1514) in lovely editions published by the Giunta family in Venice, with dozens of woodcut illustrations. They join an illustrated Giunta edition of the Decretals (1514) we acquired 60 years ago.
• Esdaile’s Temple Church Monuments (London, 1933) showing the tombs of Edmund Plowden and John Selden.
• Jesse Turner’s A Page from the English State Trials (1907?) extra-illustrated with 55 plates.
• Several 19th-century trials adorned with portraits of the accused and/or their victims.
• Fire on the Nunnery Grounds (2000), a graphic novel based on the the arson attack on the Ursuline Convent in Boston. We also obtained The Charlestown Convent: Its Destruction by a Mob, on the Night of August 11, 1834 (Boston, 1870), an account of the attack and the trials that followed.

We have acquired several law-related children’s books to join the Juvenile Jurisprudence Collection donated by Professor Morris L. Cohen, including:

• Jehoshaphat Aspin, The Constitution of England, or, Magna-Charta, Bill of Rights, Habeas Corpus, and All the Other Laws of England: Familiarly Explained for the Instruction of Youth; Illustrated with an Analytical Chart of the Government of Great Britain, Elegantly Coloured (London, 1810).
• Cruel Jim: and Other Stories (Philadelphia, 1869), a cautionary tale of how cruel children grow into career criminals.
• The Tragi-comic History of the Burial of Cock Robin: with The Lamentation of Jenny Wren; The Sparrow's Apprehension; and The Cuckoo's Punishment (Philadelphia, 1811); printed by John Bouvier, author of the first American law dictionary.

The American Trials Collection grew by 28 titles, including:

• Several trials featuring female victims: The Authentic Life of Mrs. Mary Ann Bickford (Boston, 1846); Lizzie Nutt's Sad Experience (Philadelphia, 1886), Myron Buel, the Murderer of Catharine Mary Richards (Binghamton, NY, 1879), Poor Mary Pomeroy! (Philadelphia, 1874), Trial for Libel: Susanna Torrey, Plaintiff (Fayetteville, VT, 1835), Confession of John Joyce: Who Was Executed on Monday, the 14th of March 1808, for the Murder of Mrs. Sarah Cross, with an Address to the Public and People of Colour (Philadelphia, 1808).
• A Report of the Trial, of James Sylvanus M'Clean (Philadelphia, 1812), an early use of the insanity plea, involving an extortion attempt against Stephen Girard, the wealthiest American of his time.
• More murder trials: Cluverius: My Life, Trial and Conviction (Richmond, 1887); Report of the Trial of Dominic Daley and James Halligan for the Murder of Marcus Lyon (Northampton, MA, 1806); Confession of Jesse Strang (Albany, 1827); Report of the Trials of the Murderers of Richard Jennings (Newburgh, NY, 1819); Trial of John Schild (1813).
• And... a small collection of manuscript court documents and transcripts relating to the trial of William Fitzgerald, accused of murdering a Shawnee Indian in Indiana Territory in 1802.

Additions to our William Blackstone Collection included:

• Blackstone’s Letter to the author of The Question stated (London, 1769), his contribution to the debate over the John Wilkes election.
• Outlines of the Jurisdiction of All the Courts in England and Wales by R. Maugham (London, 1838), a work closely tied to the Commentaries.
• The first edition of The Comic Blackstone (London, 1844-46) in two parts.

And a few odds & ends:

• The first edition of Edmund Plowden’s Commentaries (London, 1571), the first and for centuries the finest of the nominative reports.
• Statuti della Honoranda università de mercatanti ... di Bologna (1550), with a vellum musical manuscript used in the binding; the only U.S. copy.

MIKE WIDENER
Rare Book Librarian