The Collections

HSC acquires printed materials and early manuscripts (through 1699) that document the history of law, especially that of Western Europe (including the United Kingdom) and the United States. We rarely collect material that has already been digitized, or that we already own, unless it contains significant annotations, has a desirable provenance, or is artifactually significant. To build upon existing strengths, HSC focuses upon the following areas:

• US and UK imprints –, primary law, treatises, case reporters, works on legal education and practice, etc. – through 1900;
• Other Western European imprints through 1900, particularly those that build on our strengths in treatises; incunabula; civil and canon law; international law; legal scholarship and teaching; and French customary law and royal administrative acts;
• Anglo-American and European trials and popular trial literature through 1900; twentieth- century trials that set important legal precedent, represented emerging areas of the law, involved HLS faculty/prominent alumni, and of significant cultural importance;
• Eighteenth and nineteenth-century English crime broadsides;
• Russian and Soviet law through 1960;
• Chinese law through 1960;
• Printed materials related to the war crimes tribunals at Nuremburg and Tokyo; and
• Editions of seminal legal thinkers not covered by above criteria;

HSC collects modern manuscripts dating from 1700 to the present, collaborating with the Harvard University Archives and other repositories when appropriate. We attempt to collect comprehensively the papers of tenured Harvard Law School faculty. We selectively collect the papers of HLS graduates who have made significant contributions to the study and practice of the law. Single documents and collections pertaining to law practice, the judiciary, legal education, and notable trials are also of interest, as long as they complement HSC’s collections. We collect materials in all formats, including hard-copy, mixed, and born-digital formats.

Areas of collecting focus include:

• Collections of the professional papers of tenured Harvard Law School deans and faculty;
• Collections of the records and papers of HLS student organizations and other HLS groups that would not automatically go to the Harvard University Archives as part of formal university business;
  • Records sent directly to the Harvard University Archives include the administrative files of the Office of the Dean, other HLS offices, and faculty minutes;
• Collections of law-related materials by or about historically underrepresented individuals or groups with an HLS connection;
• Materials produced by or about United States Supreme Court Justices;
• Material relating to significant trials in the history of law and litigation, provided they complement the general library collection and HSC’s printed materials collection;
• Collections of Harvard Law School alumni whose papers reflect highly significant influence on public policy, legal principles, legal education, and law practice;
• Records of public or private legal organization that significantly influence public policy.

The Red Set is a collection of publications by or related to the Harvard Law School. It contains the following material, in both print and electronic formats:

• Monograph publications (including supplements) of works by current tenured faculty.
  • Offprints and separate articles are not actively solicited and are added to the Red Set only by donation;
• Student-created material including prize essays, graduate theses and dissertations, and notebooks recording lectures;
• Serial and selected other publications created by Harvard Law School offices, departments, and programs;
• Publications of student-run law reviews and other student organizations.

The Harvard Law School collects art and visual materials in a variety of formats including paintings, sculpture, paper prints such as engravings and lithographs, photographic prints, digitized and born-digital materials, textiles, and three-dimensional objects. The subject matter of these materials falls into two broad categories:

Items relating to the history of Harvard Law School and its role in the development and history of legal education. HSC collects fairly comprehensively in these areas.

• Images and artifacts documenting the Law School’s faculty, alumni, staff, and students;
• Images and artifacts documenting Law School activities;
• Images and artifacts documenting the Law School’s physical environment.

Items relating to the history of the law with an emphasis on American common law, but also including eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British law and twentieth- and twenty-first-century international law. HSC collects quite selectively in these areas.

• Images of people who have made noteworthy contributions to the history of the law;
• Materials related to significant American and international trials;
• Iconography of justice or the law (symbols of justice, lawgivers, etc.);
• Material illustrating legal practice or process;
• Material illustrating societal and/or cultural attitudes toward the legal professional and legal institutions.