Legal History

As a 3L at Yale Law School in the mid-1960s, Charles Donahue studied a series of decisions by Pope Alexander III (1159-1181) that became the basis of marriage law in Western Europe for the next three centuries. At the time, he didn’t realize how they would come to rule his own life.

Assistant Professors I. Glenn Cohen '03, Adriaan Lanni, Jed Shugerman, and Matthew Stephenson '03 each had papers selected for the ninth annual Stanford-Yale Junior Faculty Forum, which will take place at Yale Law School in June.

This month, Cambridge University Press will publish Professor Charles Donahue’s “Law, Marriage, and Society in the Later Middle Ages: Arguments about Marriage in Five Courts,” a 696-page comprehensive study of medieval marriage culture and litigation.

Professor Emeritus Harold J. Berman, an expert on comparative, international, and Soviet law as well as legal history and philosophy and the intersection of law and religion, died November 13. He was 89. Known for his energetic and outgoing personality, Berman recently celebrated his 60th anniversary as a law professor.

A quiz, courtesy of the Potter Stewart, of famous quotations.

Finally, the Supreme Court may have to decide what the Second Amendment means. But how much will really change?

Scholars have long been fascinated by the democracy of classical Athens and the ways it is mirrored in democratic governments of today. Athenian law, on the other hand, has received little attention, since no modern legal system is descended from it.

BEFORE NUREMBERG…
Included in a recent HLS library exhibit, these illustrations from a 16th-century book show instruments of torture and a criminal on the way to…

As a renowned international attorney and a Holocaust survivor, Samuel Pisar LL.M. '55 S.J.D. '59 has experienced mankind's capacity for genius and madness. His survival was a triumph of human spirit. His advocacy for peaceful coexistence is a message from one who has lived through hell on earth.

For 19th century printers, crime was good business. Brutal murders and other horrific crimes translated into profit when they became the subjects of single-page printings. Today close to 400 of these broadsides, most printed in England from 1820 to 1860, are preserved in an HLS library collection. They highlight acts of wrongdoing, purported confessions from the accused (often set in verse), and accounts of trials and public executions. Many are illustrated with woodcuts.

Some honors take longer to attain than others. More than 75 years after graduating from law school, 108-year-old Walter Seward '24 ('27) has earned distinction as Harvard's oldest living graduate.

HLS Library digitizes more than 1 million pages of Nuremberg Trial documents

Thanks to Josh Gottheimer '04, the greatest American civil rights speeches are together for the first time, demonstrating the injustices and progress of a growing nation and ultimately, he says, hope for its future.

Richardson is founder and executive director of the Chicago-based nonprofit organization The HistoryMakers.

In her new book, Judith Richards Hope details the struggles and successes of the women classmates who "took the place of a man."

If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then Harvard Law School should be honored. For when Frank Abagnale decided to be a lawyer--in addition to an airline pilot, doctor and professor--he knew exactly which degree would open the door.

John Knox LL.M. '36 was not short on confidence. "My name will survive as long as man survives," he wrote while an HLS student, "because I am writing the greatest diary that has ever been written."

Eli Rosenbaum '80 is driven to bring Nazis to justice before it's too late.

For the first time in decades, HLS has changed the basic structure of its first-year experience, and students and faculty are singing the praises of The New 1L.

Professor Mary Ann Glendon set out to write a straightforward history of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. But Eleanor Roosevelt would not let her do it.