Rare Book Room closes at 12:30pm today

The Rare Book Room will close at 12:30 due to a classroom visit. I am hosting the first visit of the semester from Professor Dan Coquillette's Anglo-American Legal History course--one of my favorite activities as curator. Today, we will look at the influence of Roman law on the development of the Anglo-American legal system. Students will be able to look at the Pisan Pandects (1583), a 1475 Justinian Codex, several editions of Justinian's Institutes, and a beautiful three volume Corpus Juris Civilis from 1559. The class exhibit will also feature some important canon law volumes, including Gratian's Decretum (1518) and an incunable Decretals of Gregory IX (1496). As always, I'm looking forward to the class visit and hope to have many more students engage with our collection in the future.

Zouche and RBR news

The Rare Book Room will be closed through Thursday, August 23, as I endeavor to mount a new exhibit featuring some of our international law materials. In the meantime, take a look at a new acquisition for the exhibit: a first edition of Richard Zouche's Iuris et Iudicii Fecialis, published in Oxford in 1650. Zouche is considered by some to be the first positivist in the field of international law, as custom and contemporary precedents are at the forefront of his writings. He did not coin the phrase "jus inter gentes" ("law among nations") but did popularize the term, which is seen by many as more apt than "jus gentium" ("law of nations"). The volume, in a contemporary calf binding, is bound with a second work by Zouche, his Specimen Quaestionum Juris Civilis, the only edition, published in 1653 and also at Oxford. The second work is an outline of a reading list on the civil law for students. We are very excited to add this Zouche volume to our collection and welcome you to come see it in the upcoming exhibit.