New Law Library Digital Resource: Historical Foundations of First-Year Law School Cases

The University of Minnesota Law Library is pleased to announce the release of an exciting new digital resource, Classic Cases: Historical Foundations of First-Year Law School Cases.  It is also available through the link here, as part of the Law Library's growing digital collections.

Early in their legal education, law school students are introduced to foundational cases that highlight key doctrines of historical and current law, including classics such as Palsgraf v. Long Island Railroad (1924), Hadley v. Baxendale (1854), and the complex rule against perpetuities from The Duke of Norfolk’s Case (1682). The reasoning and authorities relied on in these cases, drawn from the pages of first-year casebooks, offer valuable insight into the ways that lawyers have argued and judges have decided cases for centuries.

 

Classic Cases: Historical Foundations of First-Year Law School Cases features summaries of cases in five areas of law: constitutional law, contracts, criminal law, property, and torts. Following these summaries are discussions of selected historical precedents and authorities which contextualize the rulings and their contemporary frameworks.

 

The classic cases and their selected citations include the corresponding case reports and links to relevant volumes in the Law Library’s collections. The site also features further bibliography, images, and links to additional information. A timeline for the classic cases furnishes visual and chronological context. Researchers and students are encouraged to use the site to learn more about the development of the common law tradition. Of particular note, this site provides access to scans from selected volumes from the Library’s rich Arthur C. Pulling Rare Books Collection. These showcase the depth of the historical legal resources found in the Law Library’s Stefan A. Riesenfeld Rare Books Research Center.  

 

Classic Cases: Historical Foundations of First-Year Law School Cases was supervised by Michael Hannon '98, Associate Director for Access Services & Digital Initiatives, and Ryan Greenwood, Curator of Rare Books and Special Collections, with the invaluable assistance of law students Rachel Canoun ‘24, Mason Medeiros ‘22, Loren Olson ‘26, and Alec Shaw ‘19, who wrote and edited the case summaries. Law Library colleagues Joy Brown, Digital Technologist, designed and built the digital site, and Sophia Charbonneau, Special Collections Assistant, assembled the materials featured on it, as well as provided editing and proofreading.

  

For more information about the digital site, please contact Ryan Greenwood (612-625-7323; rgreenwo@umn.edu).

New Library Digital Exhibit: Law Books and the History of Legal Education

 The University of Minnesota Law Library is pleased to announce the release of a new digital exhibit:

"Tools of the Profession: Law Books and the History of Legal Education"

"Tools of the Profession" explores the history of legal education through literature that has profoundly shaped it. From statute books to casebooks, and from treatises to dictionaries, legal literature has developed not only to record the law and aid professionals in practice, but to guide students from the earliest stages of study.

The exhibit also showcases the reciprocal nature of legal literature and legal education. In England and on the continent, legal literature developed in response to and as a product of education. Literature in our own country has followed a similar path: even C. C. Langdell's famed "revolution" in legal education, still with us today, is first evident in his 1871 casebook on contracts. A selection of historical books illustrates transformative developments in legal education over several centuries.

An accompanying digital exhibit, "Legal Education at Minnesota," is drawn from the Law Library's rich archives. This exhibit highlights course books, lectures, exam prep material, and early exams that shed light on the history of legal education at the Law School. Selections from the Library's student notebook collection, in particular, reflect how students have engaged with the law through a tradition of dynamic classroom instruction.

The physical exhibit, on which the digital exhibit is based, will be open in the Riesenfeld Center through the spring semester. For more information about the exhibits, please contact Ryan Greenwood (rgreenwo@umn.edu, or 612-625-7323). The exhibits were curated by Ryan Greenwood, Pat Graybill, Lily Eisenthal, and Joy Brown. 

 

     

Morris L. Cohen Student Essay Competition

Announcement for the Ninth Annual Morris L. Cohen Student Essay Competition:

The Legal History and Rare Books (LH&RB) Section of the American Association of Law Libraries (AALL), in cooperation with Cengage Learning, announces the Ninth Annual Morris L. Cohen Student Essay Competition. The competition is named in honor of Morris L. Cohen, late Professor Emeritus of Law at Yale Law School.

The competition is designed to encourage scholarship and to acquaint students with the AALL and law librarianship, and is open to students currently enrolled in accredited graduate programs in library science, law, history, and related fields. Essays may be on any topic related to legal history, rare law books, or legal archives. The winner will receive a $500.00 prize from Cengage Learning and up to $1,000 for expenses to attend the AALL Annual Meeting. 

Winning and runner-up entries will be invited to submit their entries to Unbound, the official journal of LH&RB. Past winning essays have gone on to be accepted by journals such as N.Y.U. Law Review, American Journal of Legal History, University of South Florida Law Review, William & Mary Journal of Women and the Law, Yale Journal of Law & the Humanities, and French Historical Review.

The entry form and instructions are available at the LH&RB website: www.aallnet.org/sections/lhrb/awards 

Entries must be submitted by 11:59 p.m., April 17, 2017 (EDT).