Bibliography of Early American Law

Morris L. Cohen

Yale Law School

The work covers the period from the beginnings of American history up to and including 1860. It lists and describes the monographic and trial literature on American law and American legal development, regardless of language or place of publication. It also includes works on foreign, comparative, and international law if published in the United States during this crucial, formative period.

There are more than 14,000 items in the bibliography, including: treatises, bibliographies, commentaries, digests, indexes of cases and statutes, formbooks, lectures, tracts, polemics, biographies, collections of cases and statues on one subject (but not court reports or statutes in a series), trials (both civil and criminal),claims, arbitrations, constitutional conventions, catalogs of law books, crime narratives and confessions, documentary collections as well as addresses, administrative and legislative proceedings, histories, legal manuals, legislative documents (selectively) and special proceedings, and less obvious genres, such as law-related ballads, fiction, children’s books, memoirs, sermons, and plays.

Member of the American Association of Law Libraries; American Bar Association, American Library Association, International Association of Law Libraries, American Society for Legal History, Bibliographical Society of American, and other professional groups.

University of Chicago, B.A., 1947; Columbia University Law School, J.D., 1951; Pratt Institute Library School, M.L.S., 1959. Honorary degree of doctor of laws, Dalhousie University, October, 1989.

    Co-author (with Sharon O’Connor) of A Guide to the Early Reports of the Supreme Court of the United States, 1995. Author of Law: The Art of Justice, 1992; Co-author of Legal Research in a Nutshell, 6th edition; Co-author of Finding the Law, 2nd edition, 1989; Co-author of How to Find the Law, 9th edition, 1989; Co-editor of Law and Science, A Selected Bibliography, 1980.

    President, American Association of Law Libraries, 1970-1971; Director of A.A.L.L. Educational Institutes, 1964-1968; grantee, National Endowment for the Humanities, 1968-1971, 1974-1978, and 1990-1992; Chairman, Task Force on Automated Legal Research, A.B.A. – A.A.L.S. – A.A.L.L. 1971-1975; Member, Law Advisory Group, Library of Congress, Task Force on Goals, Organization and Planning, 1976; Board of Visitors, Columbia Law School, 1977-1995.

    Member of the American Association of Law Libraries; American Bar Association, American Library Association, International Association of Law Libraries, American Society for Legal History, Bibliographical Society of American, and other professional groups.

The entries in BEAL are divided into four major sections: I. Monographs, II. Civil Trials, III. Criminal Trials, IV. Special Proceedings. Within the major sections, the arrangement of entries is classified by broad subject categories (many of which have topical subdivisions). Each major subject category is preceded by a scope note describing its content in general terms. Cross-references to other categories further aid the researcher.

The special proceedings section includes, selectively, legislative and administrative proceedings of an adjudicatory nature, and arbitrations. The overall subject arrangement within each section provides the researcher with easy access to all items within a specific subject. Professor Cohen chose this format after consulting with many legal historians and law librarians.

Of equal value to the full bibliographic record are the annotations Professor Cohen has made to the entries throughout nearly four decades of research. Notes as to the physical structure of the work, its contents, or any unusual features, appear in many entries. Those notes also may include a history of the publication (e.g. prior editors or works on which it is based), bibliographical notes about the author, or comments from other sources evaluating the work in question.

In order to provide multiple points of access to each record, eight indexes are provided:

1. Jurisdiction Index – lists works related to the law of a particular jurisdiction.

2. Parties Index – includes parties in both civil and criminal litigation. Also identifies defendants in court martials and impeachments, as well as major parties in special proceedings such as arbitrations and administrative and legislative hearings.

3. Place and Publisher Index – this index is arranged alphabetically by state, by city, and then by printer and/or publisher.

4. Chronological Index – lists entries by the imprint dates or copyright date.

5. Language Index – categorizes applicable entries by foreign language.

6. Author Index – includes main authors, co-authors, compilers, editors, translators, defendants, plaintiffs, pseudonyms, and governmental and corporate bodies.

7. Title Index – includes both main and secondary titles.

8. Subject Index – is based on a fixed subject list with the addition of all relevant proper names.

In either format, BEAL offers scholars and legal researchers effective access to the voluminous, and until now, uncharted literature of early American law.