Reminder: student event in Rare Book Room tomorrow, Tuesday 10/23!!

On Tuesday, October 23rd, any interested law student is invited and encouraged to meet in the Law Library Conference Room at 12:30 (back behind the Rare Book Room). We will have cookies and drinks, drop off backpacks and book bags, and then head to the Rare Book Room! Curator of Special Collections, Laurel Davis, has selected some treasures from our collection that students can interact with and discuss.

Some featured items will include a 1475 edition of Justinian's Codex, a lovely illuminated Book of Hours from around 1400, a first edition of Blackstone's Commentaries, and several law student notebooks from the early 1800s.

The Boston College Law School community is so fortunate to have such a beautiful and rich collection of rare legal materials, and we are looking forward to sharing these gems with the students. We hope to see you!

*The photo above is from our Book of Hours (a popular devotional text for laypeople during the Middle Ages), generously donated by Professor Daniel R. Coquillette.

Legal History Roundtable in the Rare Book Room

In the fall of 2012, the Boston College Law School Legal History Roundtable started its eleventh successful year. The Roundtable draws on Boston College Law School’s and Boston College’s strength and interest in legal history. The Roundtable offers an opportunity for Boston College faculty and faculty from other area institutions, students, and members of the Boston College community to meet and discuss a pre-circulated paper in legal history. Meeting several times each semester in the Daniel R. Coquillette Rare Book Room, the Roundtable seeks to promote an informal, collegial atmosphere of informed discussion.

Open to the BC community, tonight's talk begins at 4:30 pm in the Rare Book Room. Refreshments are available at beginning at 4:15 pm. Our guest tonight is Professor Emily Kadens, the Baker and Botts Professor in Law at the University of Texas at Austin. She specializes in pre-modern European legal history. Her current research focuses on the problem of how custom functioned as law in medieval and early modern Europe. Professor Kadens' talk will be about “The Continuing Problem of Custom from the Medieval Jurists to Public International Law.”