Introductory Memorandum

To: Seminar on Research in American Legal History
From: Morris Cohen
 

    Our class will meet on Wednesdays from 4:10 to 6:00 p.m., beginning January 27.
    No text will be assigned, but there will be weekly readings in photocopied course materials (available in installments throughout the term).  Depending on your interests and background, one or more of the following books may be worth your attention from time to time during the term.  Copies of each of them will be on reserve in the Law Library, and I have asked the Yale Bookstore to order a few copies of each except for the Surrency book, which is out of print.  There should be no need for you to buy any of them, however.  I will be assigning sections from Grossman’s book from time to time, and that may be useful to have.  It is a curious production, as you will see when I pass it around in our first class.

On the history of legal literature:
Grossman, George.  Legal Research: Historical Foundations of the Electronic Age.  (Oxford University Press, 1994).  Paperback.

Surrency, Erwin.  History of American Law Publishing.  (Oceana Publications, 1990).  Hardcover.  O.P.

On American historical research generally:
Prucha, Francis.  Handbook for Research in American History, 2d ed.  (University of Nebraska Press, 1994).  Paperback.
An introductory text for graduate students in American history.

On legal research generally:
Cohen, Morris L. and Olsen, Kent.  Legal Research in a Nutshell, 6th ed.  (West Publishing Co., 1996).  Paperback.

On early American crime literature:
Cohen, Daniel A.  Pillars of Salt, Monuments of Grace: New England Crime Literature and the Origins of American Popular Culture, 1674-1860. (Oxford University Press, 1993).  Hardcover.

    One of our problems in this seminar will be the lack of a literature on research methodology in American legal history, so we will probably be spending a lot of time on published and unpublished sources.  Your questions in class will be important in keeping our attention on research techniques, particularly with the several visiting specialists whom I’ve invited to some of the sessions.
    I attach an outline of what I hope to cover on a week-to-week basis.
    If you have time to do some reading before the first class, I suggest my essay, “Legal Literature in Colonial Massachusetts,” from Law in Colonial Massachusetts… (1984).  I’ve put several offprints on reserve in the Law Library.  I suggest this on only to give you a sense of the sweep of colonial legal literature in this country.  The traditional (and I believe erroneous) view has treated the colonial period as a wasteland of legal literature.