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).

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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?