Finals Study Break: Thursday, December 9!

Come out this Thursday, December 9, from 10 a.m. to 1:30 p.m., for a study break before finals! 

Grab some coffee and tasty freshly-baked donuts outside of the Riesenfeld Rare Books Center in N30.  The Rare Books Center is on the subplaza, at the end of the hallway past the Student Orgs in N20.

When: Thursday, December 9, 10 a.m. to 1:30 p.m.

Where: Outside the Riesenfeld Rare Books Center (N30, subplaza level). 

What: Coffee and donuts!

Good luck on finals, and best wishes for the holidays from the Law Library!

Rare Books Collection: A Rare Volume of Cherokee Laws

The Riesenfeld Center has a strong collection of American Indian law, with holdings of treaties concluded between the United States government and native tribes in the nineteenth century. Featured in the collection are also letters, petitions, reports, and other communications between various tribes and the federal government; constitutions and laws made by native communities; and other publications that deal with important questions related to sovereignty, land rights, and internal organization, among others. Together the material chronicles the difficult, often painful, history of relations between American indigenous communities and the government. At the same time, it sheds light on tribal lawmaking, courts, and important aspects of social and political self-determination in the 19th and 20th century.

Among this rich material, laws relating to the Cherokee Nation in particular are varied and notable. Many items reflect attempts by the nation to maintain autonomy and communal land in Indian Territory (IT), today part of Oklahoma, to which most Cherokee were forcibly removed as a result of the Trail of Tears. A collection item (above) that captures the significance of printed law within the Cherokee community is a very rare compilation of laws, produced in 1852 in Tahlequah, IT, the nation's capital from 1839. The laws are printed in the Cherokee language, based on a syllabary developed by the famed Sequoyah, who developed a writing system for the language in the early 1800s. Sequoyah was revered for the work: Cherokee printers published in Cherokee and many Cherokee learned to read it in the 1820s. The printing of laws at Tahlequah began in 1841. From the beginning, legal texts could be found in English and Cherokee, though Cherokee language editions are particularly scarce today. Our 1852 volume, collecting earlier laws, was printed by John Candy and Mark Tyger (Damaga). The translation into Cherokee was likely by Hercules T. Martin together with Joseph Blackbird. In our copy, and as in some family Bibles, the names of one generation of the Fodder family are written out (on left-hand page above), including Sequoyah, who was likely named after the founder of the writing system. The book suggests the personal, familial, and tribal significance that a collection of law could carry, particularly one produced in the Cherokee language. 

   - Ryan Greenwood, Curator of Rare Books and Special Collections  

Original Cherokee syllabary

       

  

     

Wednesday, October 27: Halloween Rare Books Open House!

All are invited to the Riesenfeld Rare Books Center's special Halloween Open House this Wednesday, from 12 p.m. to 3 p.m.! 

Come out to see spooky treasures from our collection (including witch trials, gruesome murders, and tomes about wicked judges), and pick up snacks, drinks, and Halloween candy!

Come out in costume and get a picture on our Tumblr page!

When: Wednesday, Oct. 31st, 12 p.m - 3 p.m.
Where: Riesenfeld Rare Books Center*
What: Rare books, snacks, drinks, candy!

(*The Riesenfeld Center is located in N30 on the sub plaza, past Student Orgs in N20.)

Wednesday, October 6: Rare Books Open House!

Come out to the Riesenfeld Center's first rare books open house of the semester, this Wednesday, 12 p.m. to 3 p.m.!

Enjoy snacks and drinks, and see new and favorite treasures from the library's rare books and special collections:

When: Wednesday, October 6, 12 p.m - 3 p.m.
Where: Riesenfeld Rare Books Research Center (Rm. N30 on the Subplaza past N20).
What: Rare books, snacks and refreshments!

New Exhibit Open House: Tuesday, Sept. 28

All are invited to an open house for a special new Law Library exhibit, which commemorates and celebrates the life and career of Walter F. Mondale:

"Commemorating Walter F. Mondale ('56) (1928-2021): A Lasting Legacy"

When: Tuesday, September 28, from 12 p.m. - 4 p.m.

Where: Riesenfeld Rare Books Research Center (N30 - subplaza level)

Cookies, brownies, bagged snacks and drinks will be available. 

Walter Mondale ('56) (1928-2021) left an indelible legacy on the national political landscape. His achievements in Congress, the White House, and in Minnesota are a testament to his great skill, courage, and integrity. The Vice President’s enduring contributions were driven by his vision for a country bound by its commitments to fairness, justice, and opportunity. Mondale’s passing this year marked the loss of a great friend, particularly for the Law School’s wide community. Though we grieve his death, we also commemorate his outstanding life of leadership and service.

 

Through photographs, documents, and quotations, the Law Library’s new exhibit traces the Vice President’s career from his formative years in Minnesota to his service as a U.S. Senator, Vice President of the United States, and as an elder statesman. The exhibit also highlights the Vice President's close relationship with the Law School whose building bears his name. For more than sixty years, Mondale's deep involvement in the life of the Law School reflected his generous commitment to his alma mater, rooted in an unshakeable faith in education as the path to a better society. In the same spirit, the current library exhibit honors Walter Mondale’s monumental career and legacy. 

For more about the exhibit, please see this link.

New Library Exhibit: "Commemorating Walter F. Mondale ('56) (1928–2021): A Lasting Legacy"

The Law Library announces a special new exhibit to commemorate  the life and career of Walter F. Mondale, now open in the Riesenfeld Rare Books Research Center:

"Commemorating Walter F. Mondale ('56) (1928–2021): A Lasting Legacy" 

Walter Mondale ('56) (1928-2021) left an indelible legacy on the American political landscape. His achievements in Congress, the White House, and in Minnesota are a testament to his great skill, courage, and integrity. The Vice President’s enduring contributions were driven by his vision for a country bound by its commitments to fairness, justice, and opportunity. Mondale’s passing this year marked the loss of a great friend, particularly for the Law School’s wide community. Though we grieve his death, we also commemorate his outstanding life of leadership and service.
 
Through photographs, documents, and quotations, the Law Library’s new exhibit traces the Vice President’s career from his formative years in Minnesota to his service as a U.S. Senator, Vice President of the United States, and as an elder statesman. The exhibit also highlights the Vice President's close relationship with the Law School whose building bears his name. For more than sixty years, Mondale's deep involvement in the life of the Law School reflected his generous commitment to his alma mater, rooted in an unshakeable faith in education as the path to a better society. In the same spirit, the current library exhibit honors Walter Mondale’s monumental career and legacy. 

By any measure, Mondale’s career was extraordinary. He was appointed Minnesota Attorney General in 1960, the youngest in the country. In 1964, he was appointed to the U.S. Senate seat vacated by Hubert Humphrey and went on to serve twelve years in Congress. In the Senate, Mondale’s legislative efforts helped to usher in a new

Democratic party, focused among other issues on civil rights, consumer rights, education, the environment, and government accountability. As Jimmy Carter’s vice president, from 1977 to 1980, Mondale reshaped the role of the office, helping to guide foreign and domestic policy as perhaps no other vice president before him.

 

Although his 1984 bid for the presidency was unsuccessful, Mondale’s choice of Geraldine Ferraro as his running mate was historic, marking the first time that a woman ran as a major party nominee for vice president. Mondale was later appointed by President Clinton as ambassador to Japan, and remained active in the Democratic party throughout his life. For more than sixty years, Walter Mondale’s deep commitment to the Law School added another bright flame to his legacy. He served as an advisor to the Law School and frequently visited, spoke, and lectured here. In part for those deep and continuing ties, the Law School building was rededicated in his honor in 2001. His personal warmth, care, and involvement at the Law School made him one of its greatest friends and partners. 

For more information about the exhibit, or to schedule a tour, please contact Ryan Greenwood (rgreenwo@umn.edu; 612-625-7323). For more information about Walter Mondale's distinguished Senate career, please see the Library's award-winning digital site. For more about the Law School building, Walter F. Mondale Hall, please see this digital exhibit. For more on Mondale's career and legacy, please see the Law School's spring tribute.

   - Ryan Greenwood, Curator of Rare Books and Special Collections

 

Celebrate Constitution Day: Wednesday, Sept. 15!

Come out and celebrate Constitution Day in the Law Library!  Stop in the Library Lobby on Wednesday, September 15, for donuts and coffee, and fill out a crossword puzzle about the US Constitution for prizes!  (Bonus: take a selfie with James Madison.)

When: Wednesday, September 15, 11 a.m. - 1 p.m.
Where: Law Library Lobby
What: Donuts, Coffee and a Crossword Contest for Prizes! 

Rare Books Collection: American Classics

Among featured collections, the Riesenfeld Center holds an outstanding range of early American law. Many of these are statutory laws that open a window onto early American society. Due to the contemporary need for legislation, statutory law makes up the great bulk of colonial American law. Many other law books were English imports to America until the later 18th century. The first native case reporter, Ephraim Kirby, did not publish his collection of Connecticut cases until 1789. General commentaries did not fare much better: Blackstone's influential Commentaries were available in the colonies before the Revolution in English and American editions, but American commentaries did not become a genre of publication until the early 19th century. The narrower American legal treatise came of age in the same period. Practice guides and form books, at least, which offered to lay practitioners of the law everything from contract templates, to selections of statute and common law organized by subject, were available from the earlier 18th century, in response to practical needs.

A few early American law books also carried some political significance. One notable example, English Liberties, was produced in 1721 in Boston by the older brother of Ben Franklin, as an updated re-print of a 1680 English work by Henry Care. It collects key English statutes, with a summary of what can be called English constitutional law, and features some elements of a legal practice guide. The Boston edition of English Liberties represented a defense of the colonists' "English rights" against a British Parliament intent upon revoking colonial charters; it was reprinted again in 1774, on the eve of the American Revolution. 

Political dispute and dissent eventually became widespread in the colonies, though books were not the best vehicle for them. Cheap newspapers and pamphlets were circulated more quickly to a larger audience. As the colonists' grievances against the English Parliament and Crown became acute, in the 1760s and early 1770s, newspapers shaped and carried public opinion. Popular letters first printed in newspapers might also be reprinted later. An example is John Dickinson's Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania, printed as a series of letters in newspapers from late 1767 to early 1768, and then in collected editions. An important figure of the Revolutionary period, Dickinson gained a wide public hearing through his opposition to new British tax schemes in the Townshend Acts (1767), which he argued were threats to the colonists' liberty and rights. 

The annual publication with perhaps the largest public following was Poor Richard's Almanac, which Ben Franklin and his friends sometimes also turned to political purposes. With details on astrology, astronomy, agriculture and current affairs, the almanac sold thousands of copies each year and made Franklin a well-to-do Philadelphian. The edition from 1765 is one with a legal and political dimension, since it included the text of the new Stamp Act (1765). As pseudonymous editor Richard Saunders, Franklin included the act as "most necessary" for Americans to read. When Franklin heard of the colonists' fiery denunciations of it, in early 1766, he was resident in London on business for Pennsylvania. He was granted a Parliamentary hearing and sided with his countrymen. Repeal of the act came soon after and gave lasting credence to Franklin's diplomatic and political abilities, which he would turn to good account in the following years.

Editions of these classics form part of the Center's early American collection - and there is much more to explore.

   - Ryan Greenwood, Curator of Rare Books and Special Collections    

      
     

Rare Book School: "Law Books: History and Connoisseurship"

Rare Book School in Virginia is an excellent place to learn about the history of the book in an immersive environment. It offers week-long courses on a wide variety of topics in book history and bibliography, digital humanities, and more. One of these courses, "Law Books: History and Connoisseurship," is taught by Mike Widener, recently retired as rare books librarian at Yale Law Library. At the beginning of August, we co-taught the course material, similar to the class we taught in 2018. This year the course was taught on Zoom due to the pandemic. Although the course is usually hands-on, allowing students to interact with physical copies of books and bibliographies, document cameras have now made the online experience a pretty reasonable facsimile of the "real" thing.

The course covered the history of printed law books, with a focus on America and Europe, and types of legal publications from around 1500 to 1900. At center was always the idea of book as artifact: an object that bears with it the history of its use and ownership, which forms an integral part of the object's identity, value, and interest to a collector. Featured during the week were books with peculiar (and elegant) bindings, associations with notable owners, illustrations, annotations, and other features that enhance the items' interest. Beyond books, broadsides, letters, pamphlets, notebooks and manuscript material were discussed, along with methods to preserve and present these artifacts.

It was a very enjoyable week together with the class. We discussed and shared experiences and questions that affected all of us. At the course's conclusion, participants presented a special law collection they were developing or would develop, based partly on input from the course and classmates. As Mike often reminds, it's not the monetary value of a collection that makes it worthwhile, but rather its coherence, interest, novelty and the passion that the collector brings to it.

   - Ryan Greenwood, Curator of Rare Books and Special Collections

New Darrow Letters Available Online

The Riesenfeld Center's Darrow Collection includes more than 1,000 letters to and from Clarence Darrow (1857-1938), the legendary American trial attorney. The vast majority of letters have been digitized and are searchable as part of the Clarence Darrow Digital Collection, which also includes a rich trove of documents and analysis related to Darrow's most prominent cases, written and gathered by Professor Michael Hannon. Recently we've added 30 new and transcribed Clarence and Ruby Darrow letters to the digital site. The diverse letters relate to Darrow's legal and political views, publications, speaking engagements, friends, and family.

Among highlights are a 3-page letter to Maria Sweet Smith responding to Sweet Smith's proposal for a campaign against the death penalty. At the time, in 1930, Darrow was president of the American League to Abolish Capital Punishment. In the letter, Darrow firmly rejects the plan, which was premised on economic benefits expected from a predicted drop in crime. Darrow’s response is testimony to his humanist philosophy. For him, crime was caused by larger social forces and the abolition of the death penalty had to be based in compassion. Another reply is evidence of Darrow's support for euthanasia. Several others, like this, detail his deep opposition to the Volstead Act and Prohibition, which Darrow lectured on and debated about frequently in the 1920s. 

Other letters touch on debates and lectures, potential clients and book contracts, and on Darrow's large network of friends. Darrow's wife Ruby has several notable letters that are also now available. In one, Ruby reflects on Irving Stone's upcoming biography of her husband, Clarence Darrow for the Defense, completed three years after Darrow's death. The letter reveals Ruby's desire to protect her husband's legacy and to be credited appropriately in what became a widely-read and standard biography of Darrow.

The handwritten letters in the batch were expertly transcribed by Special Collections Assistant Ian Moret.  Many thanks are due to Ian for his wonderful work; and many thanks for all of his terrific work at the Riesenfeld Center in the past five years.  Though he is now moving on, his excellent contributions to the Darrow collection, to our physical and digital exhibits, and to the archives, in particular, will live on.     

   - Ryan Greenwood, Curator of Rare Books and Special Collections 

 

Law Library Digital Exhibit Wins Award

 

The Law Library has recently been honored by an award from the American Association of Law Libraries, in recognition of its fall 2020 digital exhibit, "Law and the Struggle for Racial Justice: Selected Materials from the Riesenfeld Rare Books Center." The Academic Law Libraries Special Interest Section awarded the exhibit the 2021 Publications Award for its significant contribution to legal literature. 

 

In particular, the exhibit's creators, Ryan Greenwood, Curator of Rare Books and Special Collections, and Patrick Graybill, Digital Technology Specialist, were recognized for their work on the site.

 

The digital exhibit highlights the Black American struggle to achieve equal rights, focusing on long historical exclusion and moments of progress in the quest to achieve equality under law. The exhibit draws on the extensive collections of the Riesenfeld Rare Books Center, including books, pamphlets, posters and other materials, which have been featured in a corresponding physical exhibit in fall 2020 and spring 2021.

For more on the exhibit please see the announcement, and the exhibit link below:

"Law and the Struggle for Racial Justice: Selected Materials from the Riesenfeld Rare Books Center at the University of Minnesota Law Library"

 

Tribute to Vice President Walter F. Mondale ('56)

Vice President Walter F. Mondale ('56) (1928-2021) was a great friend to the Law School that bears his name, and its Law Library.  The Riesenfeld Center joins the rest of the Law School community in mourning the passing of the former Vice President.  Mr. Mondale was a great example of decency and of principled public service throughout his long career.  As Dean Garry W. Jenkins said in a recent Minnesota Law tribute, "As a politician, public servant, diplomat, and lawyer, Walter Mondale exemplified the values of leadership and service that we seek to foster at Minnesota Law."

During his life, Mr. Mondale donated generously to the Law School's archives photographs, memorabilia, and other material that document his life and career, as well as his decades-long involvement with the Law School.  Among these is a particularly special photographic portrait of Mondale made by Ansel Adams in 1977.  Mr. Mondale's donations formed the basis of an exhibit and events commemorating his 80th birthday in 2008, and a commemorative exhibit centered on Mondale Hall in 2018.  Some of the photographs from the Mondale collection were also included in a recent CNN tribute.  Further images are digitized as part of the Law Library's 2013 digital exhibit focusing on Mr. Mondale's consequential Senate career.   

Mr. Mondale graciously visited the Riesenfeld Center for several events, and we have particularly fond memories of him here.  Beyond the many achievements, he was a warm, funny, and deeply caring individual, who we will greatly miss.  In the fall, the Law Library will mount an exhibit in celebration of his life and career.

   - Ryan Greenwood, Curator of Rare Books and Special Collections  

Take the Clarence Darrow Quiz!

Take a quick break from studies and enter to win the Clarence Darrow quiz!

Yesterday was the birthday of Clarence Darrow (1857-1938), perhaps the most famous American trial attorney. The Law Library holds the preeminent collection of Darrow's letters, together with case material, debates, speeches, and writings by the great lawyer. To learn more, see the Library's award-winning Clarence Darrow Digital site, which features hundreds of letters to and from Darrow and extensive material related to his most notable cases.

Test your Darrow knowledge by submitting answers to the following questions (it won't take too long)!

 

1. Which trial among the following was Darrow not involved in as defense counsel?

 

a) Leopold and Loeb 

b) Dr. Ossian Sweet 

c) Sacco and Vanzetti

d) John Thomas Scopes

2. Which film(s) were not based on Clarence Darrow cases?

a) Anatomy of a Murder (1959)

b) Inherit the Wind (1960)

c) Rope (1948)

d) Suspicion (1941)

3. Which are quotes from Clarence Darrow?

a) "When I was a boy I was told that anybody could become President. I’m beginning to believe it."

b) "From the crooked timber of humanity a straight thing was never made."

c) "The world is made up for the most part of morons and natural tyrants, sure of themselves, strong in their own opinions, never doubting anything."

d) "As long as the world shall last there will be wrongs, and if no man objected and no man rebelled, those wrongs would last forever."

e) "Every government on earth is the personification of violence and force, and yet the doctrine of non-resistance is as old as human thought — even more than this, the instinct is as old as life upon the earth."

 

4. Which if any of the following is not held in the Law Library's Clarence Darrow collection (hint: most of them we do have)?

 

a) a set of Darrow's own Illinois case reports?

b) an original movie poster from Inherit the Wind?

c) a letter from Franklin Delano Roosevelt to Darrow?

d) a caricature of Darrow by Aline Fruhauf?

e) Darrow's silver comb.

Quiz Answers: St. Patrick's Day and Women's History Month

Thanks to all for taking the St. Patrick's Day and Women's History Month Quiz!

Below are the answers - for more see further below on Belva Lockwood and the Irish case reports, both featured in the quiz.

1. Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815-1902); the Declaration of Independence. 

2. Belva Ann Lockwood (1830-1917), in Kaiser v. Stickney, 102 U.S. 176 (1880). She won her next case before the Supreme Court: United States v. Cherokee Nation, 202 U.S. 101 (1906), confirmed that the government owed the Cherokee an outstanding balance of $1,111,284.70 subject to fees.

3. Burnita Shelton Matthews (1894-1988); Constance Baker Motley (1921-2005). 

4. John Davies. Le primer report des cases & matters en ley resolues & adiudges en les Courts del Roy en Ireland. Dublin: Printed by Iohn Franckton, printer to the Kings most excellent Maiestie, 1615. 

5. All are true.

6. The Irish Jurist; first volume, first issue published November 4, 1848 (1848/1849 for year is fine).

----

Belva Ann Lockwood matriculated at the National University Law School (later absorbed by George Washington) after being denied, based on gender, at several other D.C.-area schools. She also had to petition President Ulysses S. Grant to receive her diploma from National in 1873. In 1876, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to admit her to its bar; in 1879, they finally relented: Lockwood became the first woman admitted before that court. In 1880, she argued Kaiser v. Stickney, related to a debt payment, becoming the first woman to argue before the Supreme Court. Lockwood ran for U.S. President as the candidate for the National Equal Rights Party in 1880 and 1884, amidst a career of activism and legal work also with her husband. In 1906, she won in United States v. Cherokee Nation. Some of her achievements are captured on the Green Bag's terrific bobblehead; Jill Norgren has written excellent books and several other pieces (one here, and here) about Lockwood's trailblazing career. 

The first printed Irish case reports came not long after a difficult turning point in Irish history. At the culmination of the Tudor military reconquest in 1603, James I of England (r. 1603–1625) imposed English common law throughout Ireland, replacing an older Gaelic (Brehon) law and transforming Irish landholding and inheritance. For more on early Irish law, see this excellent reference guide by Janet Sinder.

John Davies (1569–1626) served as England’s attorney general in Ireland from 1606 and published the first Irish case reports, Le primer report des cases. He brought attention to law that was unique to Ireland: in the Case of Tanistry, for example, English primogeniture ran up against the custom of Irish royal inheritance by kin-group election. The complexity of Irish history and law could not in fact be immediately subjected to the new “common” law. The Library's copy of the reports is a rare first edition. The book is also our earliest imprint from Dublin, which soon became an important player in the legal printing trade. 

   - Ryan Greenwood, Curator of Rare Books and Special Collections 

St. Patrick's Day and Women's History Month Quiz!

Welcome to our St. Patrick's Day and Women's History Month Quiz!

Answer the questions below to be entered to win swag from the bookstore!  The most correct entry wins $25 worth of swag from the Law School bookstore (t-shirts, mugs, hats, keychains, etc., or a combination), with a drawing in case of ties. UMN law students only are eligible.

Also available: an RBG prize - a poster of RBG by a local artist!

1. At the 1848 Women's Rights Convention in Seneca Falls, NY, who presented the Declaration of Sentiments? Which document are the first lines modelled on?

2. Who was the first woman to argue before the U.S. Supreme Court?  Which case did she win, and what settlement did she win?

3. Who was the first woman to serve as a judge on a United States district court? Who was the first Black woman to serve as a judge on a United States district court?

4.  The first book of Irish case reports, printed in Dublin, was from what year?  Who printed the book?  (Searching the library catalog quickly should help; the book is in our collection.)

5.  Which if any of the following was not among the Irish Penal Laws affecting Catholics during some part of the 18th century (see this very good UMN Law Library site and database, or wikipedia for the short version, on Irish Penal Laws): 

a) prohibited from intermarrying with Protestants; b) prohibited from inheriting Protestant land; c) prohibited from serving in the Irish Parliament; d) prohibited from serving as lawyers and judges; e) prohibited from voting.

6.  What is the oldest Irish law journal and date of the first volume?

New Digital Exhibit: Horace R. Hansen and the Dachau War Crimes Trials

The Law Library is pleased to announce the release of a new digital exhibit this spring:

“A Witness to Barbarism: Horace R. Hansen and the Dachau War Crimes Trials”

Captain Horace R. Hansen (1910–1995), a St. Paul native and graduate of the University of Minnesota, was a lead prosecutor at the Dachau war crimes trials (1945–1947). Assigned to Dachau in October of 1945, Hansen served as a chief prosecutor in the War Crimes Division of the U.S. Third Army and prepared key concentration camp cases for trial before the American military tribunals.  Collectively, the Dachau Trials represented the largest prosecution of Nazi war criminals undertaken by the occupying American forces in post-war Germany.  

The Library’s digital exhibit details Horace Hansen’s World War II service as a soldier, war crimes investigator, and prosecutor.  It also describes the main Dachau concentration camp trial and the genesis of Hansen’s later book about his experience, Witness to Barbarism (2002).  The new exhibit is based on several generous donations from Mr. Hansen’s daughter, Jean Hansen Doth, now held in the Library’s Riesenfeld Rare Books Research Center.  Included on the digital site are a valuable series of documents and images, including the digitized transcript of United States v. Martin Gottfried Weiss, et al., the main Dachau camp trial.  Mr. Hansen’s wartime career bears direct witness to barbarism, and reflects on its legal remedies in a powerful way that still resonates today.

The new digital exhibit will be opened as a physical exhibit in the Riesenfeld Center in the fall.  For more information about the exhibit or the Hansen archival collection, please do not hesitate to contact me (rgreenwo@umn.edu; 612-625-7323).

   - Ryan Greenwood, Curator of Rare Books and Special Collections 

Several New Acquisitions: Movements for Racial Justice

The current Riesenfeld Center exhibit, "Law and the Struggle for Racial Justice," focuses on collection items that highlight Black Americans' struggle for rights and equality in relation to the law, through the lens of historical legislation, cases, and movements which cast light on obstacles and on key moments of progress. Beyond the exhibit, the center also has an active, growing collection of material related to movements for Black American legal rights, several items of which are below. 

The earliest item in our current exhibit is an 1804 address by Quaker abolitionist Matthew Franklin to the free Black community of Philadelphia. The abolitionist movement had its origins somewhat earlier in the colonies, though largely still in Philadelphia and Pennsylvania. Anthony Benezet (1713-1784) was a prominent early figure, a Huguenot refugee from France who became a Quaker in England and adhered deeply to the Quaker belief that each human being was equal before one another and God. His writings include Some Historical Account of Guinea (1771), which details the immorality of the slave trade. In the same volume are texts by the noted English abolitionist and friend of Benezet, Granville Sharp. An earlier post has more on Sharp, a book of his at the Center, and the Somersett case. Another anti-slavery item in the collection is particularly rare, a recently-acquired circa-1850s broadside petition to Congress. It argues that the Constitution forbids slavery and urges Congress to secure the right of habeas corpus, and thus of liberty, for each person in the country. The item is one of only two recorded copies in libraries.    

Two other recently-acquired pieces relate to 20th-century civil rights. The first adds to a current exhibit item on the Trenton Six, a case that drew national headlines. Six young Black men were tried for the murder of an elderly shopkeeper in Trenton, New Jersey, in 1948, despite coerced confessions and a lack of access to counsel. The new pamphlet describes problems with witness statements and the defendants' strong alibis in the case. Four of the six defendants were acquitted and the case threw national light on due process violations in criminal cases for Black defendants. The other is an earlier issue of W. E. B. DeBois's The Crisis, the flagship magazine of the NAACP. In the issue, from 1931, are featured articles by early leaders in the NAACP including Charles W. Chesnutt and Mary White Ovington; and Robert E. Jones, one of the first bishops of the Methodist Episcopal Church. 

   - Ryan Greenwood, Curator of Rare Books and Special Collections

   

Upcoming Exhibit: Horace Hansen, Dachau War Crimes Prosecutor

Horace R. Hansen (1910–1995) was a St. Paul native, graduate of the University of Minnesota and St. Paul College of Law, and an important prosecutor at the Dachau war crimes trials (1945–1947). The Law Library's spring digital exhibit will focus on Hansen's World War II career, and his role as a war crimes investigator and chief prosecutor in the war-crimes division of the U.S. Third Army.

The upcoming exhibit is based on a rich trove of archival material held at the Center. In 2005, the Law Library received a generous donation of three boxes of material related to Horace Hansen's WWII career from his daughter, Jean Hansen Doth. We are very grateful to Ms. Hansen Doth to be able to preserve and provide access to these materials. More recently, three additional boxes of archival material have been added to the collection. This month, Ms. Hansen Doth also kindly donated four rolls of microfilm containing the trial transcript for the main Dachau concentration camp trial, an important source for study. 

The exhibit will follow Hansen's career as a lieutenant and a captain in the Army's Judge Advocate General Corps, to which he requested transfer in 1944 to assist in the prosecution of war crimes. Hansen was assigned to gather evidence of war crimes in the Netherlands and the American sector of occupied Germany, which included taking witness testimony from concentration camp inmates and photographs, and drawing up lists of perpetrators. He was then transferred to Dachau in the fall of 1945. Liberated at the end of April 1945, the concentration camp at Dachau was the first in operation under the Nazi regime and remained a symbol of the inhuman brutality and depravity of all concentration camps, many of which were modelled after it. Dachau would serve as the central trial location for war crimes committed in the American-occupied area and against Americans from 1945-47.

At Dachau, Hansen tried two cases involving American POWs, and oversaw others, including the main Dachau concentration camp trial. That trial charged 40 of the most notorious administrators, guards, and other staff with what were gross violations of the laws and customs of war. Rather than crimes against humanity, applied at Nuremberg, it was these more established charges that the prison staff and administrators at Dachau and the other camps faced. The team prosecuting the accused provided abundant evidence of mass murder (by firing squad), summary individual killing, extreme torture (including medical experimentation), abuse, starvation, intense labor, and abject neglect; and demonstrated that the operation of the camp showed a common design or purpose to kill the internees, who were political prisoners and those labelled subversive, Jews, enslaved laborers from Nazi-occupied territories, homosexuals, ethnic minorities, and others.    

The exhibit describes the main details of the trial, supported by some of the documents and photographs that Hansen preserved in his files. It also includes documents important for studying the legal organization of the trials, and procedures used to identify and review Nazi officials for criminal charges. In fact, the trials' form and procedure was modified to provide more safeguards for the defendants than ordinarily would have been afforded in a military trial, based partly on procedures of the pre-war German courts. In the end, the 40 defendants at the Dachau camp trial were found guilty and 36 were initially sentenced to death. The trial helped to establish the validity of subsequent international criminal tribunals and set a new standard of accountability for crimes committed during wartime.

A final focus of the exhibit is Horace Hansen's book, Witness to Barbarism (2002), first drafted in the 1980s and published by his daughter Jean Hansen Doth after Hansen's passing in 1995. The book chronicles the author's journey to Dachau, the horrors of atrocity, and the main camp trial. In particular, the book project arose in response to Holocaust deniers in the 1980s, who rejected teaching the Holocaust in schools. Hansen hoped in part to understand the mentality of Hitler, and his fellow Nazi ideologues and supporters, who could have ordered and carried out the extermination of millions of Jews, Russians, Poles, and people across eastern Europe; as well as political and religious dissidents, homosexuals, Roma, and others. For that purpose, Hansen compiled hundreds of pages of conversations with Hitler's stenographers, or personal secretaries, at several periods, and included excerpts of these in his book. In the end, it is perhaps not easy to reach the full depths of the pathology. But Hansen did what he had set out to do: to bear witness to barbarism, and detail its legal remedies, in a direct and powerful way.

   - Ryan Greenwood, Curator of Rare Books and Special Collections

Rare Newspapers in the Collection

Print newspapers are not always considered particularly collectible in libraries. But they are excellent time capsules for their historical moments and often record "firsts:" the first mention and immediate reaction to significant historical events. Legal events may seem less newsworthy than a moon landing, but some are special and deserve (and have received) attention. One of the most famous legal "firsts" in an American newspaper, the first publication of James Madison's June 8, 1789 draft amendments to the Constitution, were circulated in the June 13 issue of the United States Gazette. News of important legislation, court cases, and their resulting decisions can make for interesting, popular collection items; the three below are examples from our collections.    

The opening of the Northwest Territories was one such landmark event. The Territories themselves were established by the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 and renewed by a similar act in 1789. The historic legislation created what would become Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota east of the Mississippi. The new 1789 Act was printed on September 3, 1789, in the Pennsylvania Packet, an influential early newspaper and the first successful daily in the young United States. Such circulation of the new law helped induce westward settlement, though this was sharply contested by the land claims of American Indians and led to periods of war and simmering conflict.

The National Intelligencer was a long-running and significant political reporter that published government documents and Congressional debates. Run by Joseph Gales and William Seaton, the Intelligencer was the official government printer when it first published the decision in Gibbons v. Ogden on March 6, 1824, marked also as its earliest printed announcement. The landmark constitutional case established the basic interpretation of the Commerce Clause, affirming the power of Congress to regulate interstate commerce.

The Law Library's Clarence Darrow collection includes a wide variety of work related to Darrow's life and career, represented most extensively by his letters, as well as publications, briefs, speeches, personal books, and other material. It also contains selected newspaper accounts of major trials that he was involved in. Few were more notorious than his defense of Leopold and Loeb, the 1925 "thrill killers" who Darrow saved from the death penalty. Pictured is one issue from several papers in the collection that headlined the trials and focused the spotlight of national attention on it. These kinds of print media coverage can capture the contemporary interest and response to events whose white-hot celebrity is otherwise harder to communicate to audiences with the passage of time.  

   - Ryan Greenwood, Curator of Rare Books and Special Collections