Legal History Resources

The University of Missouri’s 17th-19th Century British Religious, Political, and Legal Tracts are a digital library collection gathering over 20,000 pieces of English pamphlet literature covering all topics of British society during this period, from taxation to Catholicism to agriculture. The purpose of the collection is to store and provide free access to these brief writings as a historical window into a popular medium for social expression at the time.

The British Privy Council served as the highest appellate court for the 13 colonies destined to become the United States. The Privy Council handled appeals originating in the colonies in Canada and the Caribbean as well.

A collection of digital documents relevant to the fields of Law, History, Economics, Politics, Diplomacy and Government dating from 400 B.C. to the present.

A searchable, online database of the full text of Bracton On the Laws and Customs of England, in the original Latin and in English. The detailed work attempted to make sense out of English law largely in terms of the ius commune, the combination of Roman and canon law that was taught in the universities in Bracton's time. Written in the 1220s and 1230s and updated through the 1250s.

This digital collection contains approximately 2,300 legal documents and manuscripts focused primarily on Boston and the New England area and spanning over two centuries, regarding land use and transfers, law and legal systems, town governance, family matters and daily life.

A collection of primary documents and narrative essays for dozens of famous trials.

Begun as the 'Eighteenth Century Short Title Catalogue', the ETSC catalogs books, pamphlets and other ephemeral material printed in English-speaking countries from 1701 to 1800.

A directory of digitized collections of rare and important materials from the Harvard Law School Library.

This Federal Judicial Center site provides historical biographical information and professional resumes of federal judges since 1789. The site also provides legislative history information on courts and circuits in the federal judiciary, sets forth statutes related to the establishment of the judiciary and explores other selective judicial topics.

A directory of Medieval Legal History online resources, including Germanic, English, European, Roman, Jewish, and Islamic legal history of the period.

The blog's active contributors gather and comment on news about scholarship, new ideas, and new developments in the field of legal history. A few new items are posted daily.

A directory of numerous legal history resources available online.

This database indexes all year book reports printed in the chronological series for all years between 1268 and 1535, and many of the year book reports printed only in alphabetical abridgements. Of these reports, all 6,901 from 1399 through 1535 have been fully indexed and paraphrased in this database

The Law section of NetSERF, "the Internet connection for Medieval Resources", contains a directory to numerous online medieval law resources.

The Library is where electronic versions of classic books about individual liberty are stored. These texts go back some 4,000 years and cover the disciplines of economics, history, law, literature, philosophy, political theory, religion, war and peace. They are in a variety of formats - facsimile PDFs so scholars can view the original text, HTML for ease of searching and attractive layout, and text-based PDF EBooks for personal use.

This site provides information on Roman law sources and literature, the teaching of Roman law, and the persons who study Roman law. Available in English and German.

This eJournal of the Social Science Research Network distributes working and accepted paper abstracts on the history of law and legal institutions, as well as other historical inquiries that relate to current legal issues.