Legal History
General Legal History
- Commercial databases (accessible only from certain university sites)
- ABA-CLIO America: History and Life (standard bibliographic source for the study of American history)
- JSTOR (full-text history journals database)
- HeinOnline (legal periodicals dating back to early 1800s)
- Making of Modern Law (full-text of over 21,000 19th and early 20th century legal treatises & pamplets)
- APS Online (American Periodical Series; full-text popular magazines and journals 1740-1900)
- Free databases:
- American Memory: Historical Collections for the National Digital Library
- Documents from the Continental Congress and the Constitutional Convention
- James Madison Papers
- Century of Lawmaking for a New Nation, 1774-1875 (Journals of Congress (House Journal, Senate Journal, etc.), debates (Annals of Congress, 1789-1824; Register of Debates, 1824-1837; Congressional Globe, 1833-1873, Congressional Record, 1873-) and statutes and selected documents (Statutes at Large, American State Papers, U.S. Serial Set).
- Thomas Jefferson Papers
- Slaves and the Courts, 1740-1860
- Abraham Lincoln Papers at the Library of Congress
- Google Books (full-text of public domain texts, including many major treatises)
- Browse subject "law" full-text only. Feel free to add terms to this search. For example, basic search plus "Blackstone."
- New York Times Free Archive 1851-1922 (New York Times articles in public domain; indexes later articles available for-pay. May need to establish free account).
- Constitution of the United States: Analysis & Interpretation - Comprehensively comments on and annotates the Constitution
- Political Graveyard: A Historic Database of American Cemeteries
- The Biographical Directory of the United States Congress (Official biographies of persons who served in the United States Congress. Additional information can be found at historical pages maintained by the House (http://clerk.house.gov/art_history/house_history/index.html) and Senate (http://www.senate.gov/learning/learn_history.html ).
- Cornell University's Making of America (Full-text of major 19th century American periodicals)
- American Memory: Historical Collections for the National Digital Library
Kentucky Legal History
- Attorney Generals of Kentucky: 1792-present
- Judges of Kentucky's Highest Court: 1792-present
- Google Books on Kentucky Legal History
Kentuckians on the U.S. Supreme Court
- Federal Judicial Center http://www.fjc.gov/
- Federal Judges Biographical Database -- biographical information for all judges who have served on the U.S. District Courts, U.S. Circuit Courts, U.S. Courts of Appeals, and the Supreme Court since 1789.
- See Also: Directory of Manuscript Collections Related to Federal Judges and the Directory of Oral History Interviews Related to the Federal Courts .
- Guide to Papers of Louis Dembitz Brandeis http://library.louisville.edu/law/brandeis/
- Guide to Papers of John Marshall Harlan http://library.louisville.edu/law/harlan/
General Kentucky History
Southern Legal History
- University of North Carolina Center for the Study of the American South
- University of Maryland Freedmen and Southern Society Project
- Jacksonian Miscellanies
- University of Mississippi Center for the Study of Southern Culture
- Stanford University's Martin Luther King, Jr. Papers Project
- The Library of Virginia
- LSU U.S. Civil War Center
del.icio.us
This page has been created by Kurt Metzmeier, kurt.metzmeier@louisville.edu , as a convenience to legal history researchers, but is not meant to be definitive. Please send any suggestions directly to Professor Metzmeier.
Last updated: January 3, 2009