Harvard Law Library

The Harvard Law School Library uniquely owns and manages approximately one million pages of documents relating to the Nuremberg Trials: thirteen trials conducted just after World War II to prosecute leaders of the Nazi regime. To preserve the contents of these documents—which include trial transcripts and full trial exhibits—the library has undertaken a multi-stage digitization project to make the collection freely accessible online.

A room that was meant to offer a respite from the rigors of the Harvard Law School curriculum became a portal to exploring some of the most important issues in American law.

More than 60 Harvard Law students and 27 HLS faculty members took over the typically quiet tables of the library reading room for the first “Notes and Comment” event.

During a Library Book Talk at Harvard Law School, writer Gish Jen discussed her latest book, “The Girl at the Baggage Claim: Explaining the East-West Culture Gap,” making the case for the sociological and cultural patterns that influence many aspects of identity.

In a new book, “#Republic: Divided Democracy in the Age of Social Media,” Harvard Law School’s Cass R. Sunstein argues that social media curation dramatically limits exposure to views and information that don’t align with already-established beliefs, which makes it harder and harder to find an essential component of democracy — common ground.

On Jan. 5 President Barack Obama ’91 announced several key administration posts, including Jonathan Zittrain ’95 as appointee for member of the National Museum and Library Services Board (NMLSB).

In 1949, four years after the Nuremberg war crime trials began, the Harvard Law Library received the most complete set of documents from the Nazi prosecutions outside that of the National Archives; now, a small team is working on analyzing and digitizing the documents--often, a difficult and haunting task--for the HLS Nuremberg Trials Project.

Historically, libraries have been collections — books, multimedia materials and artwork. But increasingly they're about connections, linking digital data in new and different ways, but Harvard Law's Caselaw Access Project is a state-of-the-art example of that shift.

The latest exhibit from the Harvard Law School Library, "What Not to Wear: Fashion and the Law," looks at some of the intersections of fashion and the law, from historic laws setting strict class distinctions for fashion, to modern intellectual property law’s approach to protecting those who design and create fashion.

HLS Professors Tomiko Brown-Nagin and Jonathan Zittrain ’95 have been elected members of the American Law Institute--the leading independent organization in the United States producing scholarly work to clarify, modernize, and improve the law.

Dr. Paul Beran will join the Harvard Law School’s Islamic Legal Studies Program as executive director of SHARIAsource—the online platform designed to provide content and context on Islamic law.

In his role at the HLS Library, Matt Seccombe spends much of his day sorting through roughly a million pages of horror, analyzing documents in the HLS Library’s Nuremberg Trials Collection—one of the most extensive collections in the world of documents from the trials of military and political leaders of Nazi Germany and other accused war criminals.

The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation has awarded $425,000 over two years for the development of SHARIAsource—an online Islamic law resource founded and directed by Harvard Law School Professor Intisar Rabb.

Over 300,000 rare books, 3,500 linear feet of manuscripts, and 70,000 visual resources—photographs, prints, paintings, and objects—make up Harvard Law School’s Historical and Special Collections. Here's a look inside one of the world’s most comprehensive archives of research materials for study of the history of law.

According to Professor Charles Donahue, the best-known innovation in legal academia— the case method of legal teaching—may have had an early precursor dating all the way back to the 13th century.

The Henry Luce Foundation recently awarded $400,000 over two years for the development of SHARIAsource, a project designed to be an online portal of resources and analysis on Islamic law and directed by Harvard Law School Professor Intisar A. Rabb.

Many scholars argue that the Magna Carta’s importance through the centuries has been greatly exaggerated. Yet for others, its status as a symbol of freedom and a check on absolute power is undeniable. Elizabeth Papp Kamali ’07, sees merit in both arguments.

800 years later, the ‘great charter’ still fascinates

Located on the first and second floors of Wasserstein Hall—the heart of social and academic activity on the HLS campus—Harvard Law School's historic collection of faculty portraits provide a backdrop for the daily routines and informal interactions of students and faculty members.

On Nov. 21, Harvard Law School Professor Laurence Tribe '66 participated in a panel discussion of his latest book, “Uncertain Justice: The Roberts Court and the Constitution,” with Dean Martha Minow and Professor Richard Lazarus.

During World War I, about 400,000 “enemy aliens” were imprisoned by all sides in camps on nearly every continent. During that time, Germany’s only exclusively civilian prison camp, Ruhleben Gefangenenlager, became a model of civil functionality.

On the second floor of the City-County Building in Madison, Wisconsin, there now hangs the portrait of a man named Nathan Dane. The same steady gaze examines visitors 1,100 miles away as they step off the elevator on the fourth floor in Langdell Hall at Harvard Law School.

Credit: HLS Historical & Special Collections Many attorneys work hard to make sure cases don’t go to trial—but not always successfully. That practical reality was…

When writing laws, trying to prevent official abuse can actually create or exacerbate the very risks they are intended to avoid, argues Professor Adrian Vermeule ’93 in his new book, “The Constitution of Risk.”

A current exhibit in HLS Library’s Historical & Special Collections department highlights some new and unusual acquisitions, many of which were meant to be accessible to people untrained in the law.

When writing laws, trying to prevent official abuse can actually create or exacerbate the very risks they are intended to avoid, argues Professor Adrian Vermeule ’93 in his new book, “The Constitution of Risk.”

At Harvard Law School and its library, digital experts are busy inventing the future of textbooks, the classroom and information access.

The HLS Library collection includes books and documents that highlight some of the historical rules and regulations surrounding everything comestible.

When you next have a free moment online, visit the Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. Digital Suite, launched by the Harvard Law School Library early…

On Jan. 11, the Harvard Law School Library announced the opening of a new exhibit titled “Extra! Extra! Read All About It: A Tale of True Crime.” Featuring materials from the library’s Historical & Special Collections, the exhibit examines a short chapter in the United States’ history of true crime narratives, covering topics such as serialized true crime literature, crime photography in newspapers, and new angles on the media coverage of the Sacco and Vanzetti case.

In a first for the Harvard Law School Library, the Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. Digital Suite, which went live on the web Dec. 11, aggregates multiple archival holdings into a single, hyperaccessible digital suite that anyone with a computer can search, browse, and tag.

On a sunny day in June, seven members of the Sacks club, the team that won the Ames moot court competition in 1959, met on the steps of Langdell library to reminisce over what they called their “unlikely” victory, and to talk about where their lives had taken them in the fifty years since.

This fall, visitors to Langdell Hall have an opportunity to take a deeper look at the professor who saved a School. “A Storied Legacy: Correspondence and Early Writings of Joseph Story” is an exhibit of letters and manuscripts on display through Dec. 7 in the Harvard Law School Library’s Caspersen Room.

Digitized materials give new perspective on a storied figure Credit: HLS Historical & Special Collections The Story-Pitman letters offer a rare glimpse of the relationship…

The Harvard Law School Library has curated a collection of original documents and images from the life, legacy and world of Joseph Story, a lawyer, beloved teacher, prolific author and Supreme Court justice. The new exhibit, “A Storied Legacy: Correspondence and Early Writings of Joseph Story,” is on view in the Caspersen Room, Harvard Law School Library, through December 7, 2012. Complementing and expanding upon the exhibit is a new Joseph Story Digital Suite.

The HLS Library’s recent acquisition and digitization of “Summa de Legibus Normanniae” (Summary of the [Customary] Laws of Normandy) has the attention of legal history scholars, particularly HLS Professor Charles Donahue, author of “Law, Marriage, and Society in the Later Middle Ages: Arguments about Marriage in Five Courts.”

The Harvard Law School Library has announced the expansion of the Nuremberg Trials Project, a digital collection of documents relating to the trials of military and political leaders of Nazi Germany by the International Military Tribunal and also the trials of other accused war criminals by the United States Nuremberg Military Tribunals.

The Harvard Law School Library has announced the creation of the Morris L. Cohen Fellowship in American Legal Bibliography and History.

Having Harry “Terry” Martin at the helm of the Harvard Law Library was a comfort and an inspiration not only for me, when I was director of the Boston College Law Library, but also for the other law library directors in New England and in the profession generally.