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.”

Magna Cartas, Bracton, and Domesday!

I was happy to host another visit from Professor Daniel R. Coquillette's Anglo-American Legal History class last week. The focus of this visit? Magna Cartas, Henry Bracton, and the Domesday Book! The volumes on display included a 1539 pocket edition of the Magna Carta printed by Robert Redman; a 1556 Magna Carta printed by Richard Tottel and purchased at auction several years ago; a beautiful 1632 Pulton's statutes, opened to the text of the Magna Carta; Roscoe Pound's personal copy of Bracton's De Legibus et Consuetudinibus Angliae (London, Richard Tottel, 1569); and another edition of Bracton's great work with interesting provenance--a 1640 edition owned by Isaac Parker, the first faculty member at Harvard Law School. Our Alecto edition of the Great Domesday was displayed open to a page in the Devonshire section--students enjoyed the authentic silver penny from the reign of William the Conqueror that was inserted in the front cover when the book was published. As always, it was a pleasure to host Professor Coquillette's class!

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.

New acquisition: 1746-47 complaint against a black servant in Hatfield, Massachusetts

One of the main focuses of BC Law’s special collections involves documents created and used by working lawyers in colonial and early America. I recently purchased a complaint for our collection related to a 1746-1747 Hatfield case brought by one Ichabod Allis against a black servant (perhaps slave?) of a man named Seth Dwight. The defendant, referred to in the complaint as Medad Negro, is accused of burning down Allis's barn. Medad apparently confessed to the crime. On the back of the complaint, we can see that three witnesses, Elisha Allis (presumably the son of Ichabod, the complainant), David Belding, and Jonathan Bardwell, put up 10 pounds bond each to testify. That would have been quite a sum of money in 1747!
Israel Williams, the Justice of the Peace who wrote up the complaint, references Medad being jailed and bound over for trial in Springfield Superior Court. I'm investigating what happened in the aftermath of the complaint and will report back with any pertinent discoveries!
Images of the entire complaint, along with my transcription, will be posted on our Facebook page!

1819 partnership agreement

One of our recent acquisitions is an 1819 agreement of co-partnership between two Boston attorneys, William Thurston and John M. Fiske. It is a 4 page folio manuscript, in good condition, with quite legible handwriting. Reading between the lines, the agreement seems to indicate that Thurston was easing out of the lawyering business due to health or a natural interest in retiring, and Fiske was to relieve him of some of the everyday tasks of a law practice. A large portion of the agreement concerns who will receive what fees for which services. One of my favorite passages comes from the 6th Article of Thurston's obligations--he was to retain responsibility for the expenses of the office, including the cost of wood and candles. It really conjures up images of Bartleby the Scrivener!

The photo above is of the first page. Other images are available on our Facebook page!