Wednesday, March 15: Rare Books Open House!

Come out to the Riesenfeld Center's March open house, this Wednesday, from 12 p.m. to 3 p.m.!

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

When: Wednesday, March 15, 12 p.m - 3 p.m.
Where: Riesenfeld Rare Books Research Center*
What: Rare books, bagged snacks and treats, and refreshments!

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

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. 

 

     

Legal History Prize: 2023 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 Gale, a Cengage company, announces the Thirteenth 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 $1,000.00 prize from Gale, a Cengage company, and will be invited to present their paper to AALL members via webinar.
 
Winning and runner-up entries will be invited to submit their entries to UNBOUND: A Review of Legal History and Rare Books, 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, the 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/lhrbsis/awards-grants/. Entries must be submitted by 11:59 p.m., May 15, 2023 (EDT). 

 

Spotlight on Rare Books: Joost de Damhoudere's Praxis Rerum Criminalium

Last spring, Professor Bruno Debaenst was the visiting professor to Minnesota from the Faculty of Law at Uppsala University. As an expert legal historian, he has truly wide-ranging interests, from employment, labor and insurance law, to international legal organizations, Swedish legal history, and early and modern Belgian legal history. At the Law School, he taught an excellent class on historical trials in comparative perspective.

Bruno visited as part of the wonderful exchange program between the Minnesota and Uppsala law schools that dates back to the fall semester of 1982. The program has sent numerous faculty and students of the two law schools back and forth for enriching teaching and study across the Atlantic.  

 

During Bruno's stay we became good friends and he became interested in one of our historical law books in particular, a striking copy of Joost de Damhoudere's Praxis Rerum Criminalium (1570). The book is remarkable as one of the most extensively illustrated law books, featuring dozens of woodcuts graphically depicting the crimes it discusses. Our 1570 copy is additionally interesting for the unusually rich, creative annotations made by a contemporary student, citing literature and law in German, Latin and Greek. Notably, our copy was also owned by Hermann Kantorowicz, an influential legal historian and scholar of the 20th century, whose personal library is held in our collections.

 

Last spring, we had a nice opportunity to discuss this extraordinary book for the Premodern Podcast "I've Got A Thing" series, hosted by the Center for Premodern Studies at Minnesota. Bruno highlighted in his discussion one further feature that is especially remarkable about Damhoudere's magnum opus: it was plagiarized from a manuscript by Philip Wielant, a city magistrate of an earlier generation. Bruno's great comments 'revealed the steal' and we talked further with Elijah Wallace, a PhD candidate in the History Department, about the illustrations and annotations. The podcast is available here.

 

   - Ryan Greenwood, Curator of Rare Books and Special Collections  

 

 

 

Wednesday, February 1: Rare Books Open House!

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

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

When: Wednesday, February 1, 12 p.m - 3 p.m.
Where: Riesenfeld Rare Books Research Center*
What: Rare books, bagged snacks and treats, Valentine's candy, and refreshments!

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

Rare Books Collection: Clarence Darrow's Books and Library

The Law Library and Riesenfeld Center's Clarence Darrow Collection features more than a thousand letters to and from the great American trial attorney. It has also grown recently through the acquisition of significant books from Darrow's personal library, and several owned by close family members. The books augment the extensive printed material related to Darrow's legal cases, speeches, debates, and other writings that round out the collection. A number of the new items have been inscribed by Darrow, or inscribed to Darrow by friends and associates. The books, bookplates, and inscriptions tell us more about what Darrow owned and read, and shed light on some of the volumes and people he cherished.

Darrow was the nation's leading criminal defense attorney in the early 20th century and he remains today the most famous American trial lawyer. His memorable courtroom arguments, speeches, and eloquent, "country lawyer" rhetoric won him fame and saved the lives of a long series of criminal defendants. His courtroom rhetoric was often imbued by his pessimistic philosophy, along with a belief in compassion as the reasonable response to human frailty. The same views were distilled in key works for popular audiences. They can be found in his early volume, A Persian Pearl, a collection of literary essays and his first book-length publication; Farmington, a semi-autobiographical novel about growing up; An Eye for an Eye, his second novel, treating poverty and crime; and The Story of My Life, his mature autobiography. In addition to these are more minor works, including A Skeleton in the Closet, which have supplied some of Darrow's most quotable lines.

 

Typical of authors, Darrow signed and inscribed copies of these works, often for friends and fairly well-known associates. Darrow's library also contained works of friends and associates who personalized and sent him their publications. Among the recently acquired books are inscribed volumes of poetry, in particular, that suggest Darrow's own literary ambitions and the kind of critical, socially-oriented poetry that he preferred. Of special interest among the volumes is a first edition of A Persian Pearl, inscribed by Darrow to his first wife, Jessie Ohl Darrow. Though comparatively little is known about their relationship, in the inscription, written two years after the marriage ended, Darrow calls Jessie "his best friend," suggesting an enduring warmth as they continued to care for their son, Paul. Another family heirloom is inscribed fondly by Jessie to Paul, and another of Paul's books is inscribed by Darrow's father, Ammirus.

 

Together the books from Darrow's library and family members enrich the Library's Darrow Collection and cast more light on his personal life and relationships.  

  

   - Ryan Greenwood, Curator of Rare Books and Special Collections

 

Finals Study Break: Monday, December 12!

Come out next Monday, December 12, from 12 p.m. to 3 p.m., for a study break during finals! 

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

When: Monday, December 12, 12 p.m. to 3 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!