History of the Harvard Law School Library
In 1723 Harvard University had seven volumes of common law in its Library, but no law school. Today the Harvard Law School Library, a member of the bibliographical commonwealth of Harvard University, holds more than one and a half million books and manuscripts and is expanding in many new directions. The Library is adding computers, acquiring microforms, and participating in cooperative ventures, such as the Research Libraries Information Network and the New England Law Library Consortium, which enhance readers' access to research materials. Generosity, vision, and good fortune have combined to build a legal studies facility of challenging depth and potentiality. This is the story of how the Library has grown.
The formation of the Law School was first announced in July 1817, with the promise that the students would "have access to a complete law library." In those days $681.74 (14 percent more than the original budget allowed for law books) was sufficient to provide a good beginning library, small enough to be housed in the office of the University Professor of Law in College House #2, then located north of the present Harvard Coop building.
As years passed, individual and institutional donors contributed funds and books. The Library consisted of 584 titles in 1826. Three years later the Joseph Story collection of over 1,000 books was added. In 1832 the expanding Library was moved across the street to Dane Hall. Two years later, Roman, Spanish, and French law books from the Livermore collection were bequeathed to the Library. During this time Professor Simon Greenleaf devoted his energies to developing the Library. By 1841 there were 6,100 volumes in the collection, enough to allow "the student to verify every citation which is made in Blackstone's Commentaries." Five years later the Visiting Committee could report that the Law Library was unsurpassed in the Union. In 1854 the same Committee could boast that the Library was "more affluent of law books in the English language than any other collection." But by that time the Library was probably beginning to rest on its laurels; Professor Greenleaf, its prime advocate, had retired in 1848, and a series of student librarians cared for the Library under the watchful eyes of the school's janitor and general factotum, John Sweetman.
A note of dismay was registered in 1855, a period of hard financial times: it was observed that there was "little regularity in the management of books and a general want of neatness and method" in the Library. Three years later it was disclosed that during the previous dozen years 870 volumes had been lost, 150 of them during 1858 alone-"a bibliofuracity…deserving of special punishment…carelessness not to be distinguished from crime."
Dean Langdell
When Christopher Columbus Langdell was appointed first Dean of the Law School in 1870, he revived the traditional commitment to excellence in the Library. Langdell had grown up on a farm in New Hampshire and had been a popular law student and student librarian (1852-1854) at the Law School before going on to practice law in New York. On his return to Harvard he pioneered the use of the case system, employing the Socratic method in teaching law. He believed that the Library was to law students what the lab oratory was to scientists, and that its great importance demanded that vigilant improvement be made. Langdell hired the Law School's first full-time librarian. He discontinued the practice of providing students with individual textbooks and pushed for the thorough collecting of law reports.
In 1883 the Library was moved to a fireproof room in Austin Hall (the room which has since become the Ames Court Room). Seven years later that space was already congested, and Dean Langdell reported to President Eliot that, although major improvements had been made in the facilities, a new library building was now needed. By the turn of the century the Library was growing at the rate of over 6,000 volumes per year.
Growth of the Library
In 1903 the Brinton Coxe collection of Canon law and the Gray collection of Supreme Court records were acquired. Two years later the Barnard collection of portraits was received. The number of students using the Library was rapidly increasing. The University Overseers came to realize that "the school must somehow meet the demands for shelter of the young men who thronged its gates."
Thus, in 1906-1907 the south wing of Langdell Hall, including a seven storied stack room, was built. By 1910 these spacious quarters housed some 120,600 volumes. The following year, the comprehensive Rawle collection of bar association proceedings was given to the Library. In 1912, at the urging of Professor Roscoe Pound, the priceless 14,000 volume international law library of the Marquis de Olivart was acquired. For fear of an impending prohibition against the export of this international treasure, it had to be smuggled out by night after the deposit of gold bullion in the Marquis's Paris bank.
The officers of the Library had come to realize that the position of primacy among law libraries, which Harvard Law School Library enjoyed, entailed heavy responsibilities: "the larger a law library is, the faster it must grow." And grow it did.
Friends of the Law School jointly contributed $10,000 to purchase the unrivaled Dunn collection of early English law books in 1913. In 1921 the Viollet French legal history collection, and in 1922 the Lammasch, Landsberg, Loeffler and Lucchini collections were added. The north and west wings of Langdell Hall were completed in 1929. Three years later the legal portions of the Stolberg family library-- 8,000 volumes of Roman, Canon, and German jurisprudence-- were acquired by the Library. This purchase included many rare old books requiring a special place for safekeeping. In 1948 the north end of the Langdell reading room, having been used by the government to develop the Sperry bombsight, was converted to a three storied stack and display room for rare books. The Treasure Room was dedicated in honor of the Law School's graduates who had died in the two World Wars.
The Langdell Renovation
Harvard Law School's Langdell Hall re-opened on September 2, 1997, at 3:00 p.m., one year, two months, 22 days, and 9 hours after closing for a $35 million renovation. More information.
Reading Room Law Quotations
Translations of and attributions for the quotations inscribed around the ceiling of the Landell Reading Room.
Archival Photos of the Langdell Reading Room
To see how the Langdell Reading Room has changed over the years (or, depending on your point of view, just how much it's stayed the same) click here.