TAKE NOTE EXHIBIT LABELS - KB & MLP NOVEMBER 2012
site visit by Karen Beck and Mary Person.
Anonymous, De termino Michaelis anno primo Eduardi Quarti
(Year Book of Edward IV: 1461-1470)
London: Richard Tottell, 1572
Rare STC 9776; Beale R228; HOLLIS 9307927
This page is from a volume of twenty “year books” covering the reign of
Edward IV. It was published between 1571 and 1572, nearly a century after
Edward’s death in 1483. In the upper corner of the first leaf of the text, a
former owner recorded the price he paid for the book on “29 Jannarii anno
de 1587 regni Eliza. 30”—or 1588 in the modern calendar. Written
throughout the volume in the same careful hand are marginal notes and
many citations. Perhaps most interestingly, below the colophon at the end of
each year book the annotator added, in Latin, the dates on which he read
the year books, from 31 January 1587 [i.e. 1588] to 23 May 1588. English
year books themselves were a form of note-taking intended to guide lawyers
in future court cases. First devised around 1300, year books consisted of
notes on points of debate and pleading in court cases. They continued to be
produced into the 16th century, after which they were replaced by other
kinds of case reports. Year books were first printed in the early 1480s by
William Machlinia. Later, the prolific 16th-century London printer Richard
Tottell produced over 200 editions of year books, including reprints and
compilations.
Anthony Fitzherbert, Office et auctoryte des iustyces de peas
London: Richard Tottell, 1584
Rare STC 10979; Beale T330; HOLLIS 003973326
This is a copy of an expanded Law French edition of Sir Anthony Fitzherbert’s
popular treatise on the duties of justices of the peace. At the top of the title
page, its late sixteenth century owner—most likely a man—signed his name.
Unfortunately his signature is now indecipherable due to close cropping
(possibly when the Law Library had it rebound in 1897). In the sixteenth
century, readers often purchased their books as printed sheets and had
them bound to their specifications, and it was common practice for legal
texts to be interleaved for note-taking. In this case, the former owner had
this work partially interleaved and subsequently made lengthy notes on
those sheets. His extensive annotations to the text itself include citations to
laws, given in regnal years. Additionally, and perhaps most interestingly,
small vellum tabs were sewn onto the edges of selected leaves of text and
labeled by topic. The irregularity of the linen stitches leads one to believe
that these tabs were sewn on by the owner. Many of the tabs are now faded
and most are illegible, but they bear witness to this early reader’s efforts to
organize and find his way efficiently through the printed text.
Richard, Earl of Anglesey, The Trial of the Right Honourable
Richard Earl of Anglesey
London: 1744
HOLLIS 4021485
As it turned out, Richard earl of Anglesey was neither right nor honorable.
The trial was one in a series between the Earl and James Annesley, who
claimed to be the legitimate son of the Earl’s older brother, whom Richard
had defrauded to secure both title and fortune. Though the trial transcripts
were published in London, the legal drama itself took place in Ireland. This
trial was about a fight which occurred on September 16, 1743, between the
Earl and some of his supporters on one side, and James and some of his
friends on the other, but the trial did not take place until the following
August, 1744. However, during the previous November of 1743 a series of
court actions had upheld the claims of James Annesley. The protracted legal
struggle between the Earl and James Annesley attracted the rapt attention of
the eighteenth-century English public, and was used by Robert Louis
Stevenson as the basis for his novel Kidnapped. The legal saga had all the
elements of true drama: a wicked uncle, a deprived orphan forced into exile,
and his return to reclaim his rightful name and place. As shown here on
page 41, this anonymous reader’s comment in his copy of the published trial
transcript leaves no doubt as to his sympathies.
Anonymous, Registrum Brevium
Great Britain: ca. 1380
HLS MS 65; HOLLIS 5680961
This manuscript contains copies of writs beginning in the reign of Richard II
(1377-1399). It is a composite manuscript of 308 folios, in a later binding.
Bound in at the front are some vellum leaves containing a detailed table of
contents (TOC) for the first 98 folia of the manuscript. The listing groups the
folios by numbered gathering; within each gathering there is a consecutive
list of some of the marginal lemmata for the content of the page. The
numbering of the gatherings appears as a running heading on the gatherings.
Not all the lemmata are copied into this list, and some gatherings are given
more detailed descriptions of content than others, so the TOC reveals both
the content of the first section, and the entries most significant to the
compiler. The enumeration of the gatherings is given according to the AngloNorman system in which, for example, folio 98 is given as XX over iiii (4
times 20) plus X (10) plus viii (8). The logical inference is that the TOC was
compiled soon after the text which is now the first section of MS. 165 was
written. The TOC ends with folium 98v which concludes a gathering, but may
not be the end of the original text.
Johann Gottlieb Heineccius, Elementa Iuris Civilis Secundum
Ordinem Institutionum
Leiden, Netherlands: 1751
HOLLIS 12685197
This treatise on Roman law is relatively rare, with about twenty copies of
this edition owned by libraries worldwide. This copy, however, is unique.
Rather early in its history, this smallish volume (20.5 cm) was bound with
larger-format blank sheets (26 cm) interleaved between each page,
specifically to facilitate the process of notetaking. About twenty of the leaves
feature handwritten notes by an early owner, perhaps Alexander Speirs, a
member of the Scottish gentry whose armorial bookplate graces the inside
front cover of this book. Heineccius’ text is in Latin; the notes were written
in English with a little Latin. In some annotations, the printed text seems to
have served as a jumping-off point for the note-taker to ruminate on issues
and problems of his day. One long annotation on political systems and
theories of punishment (opposite page 341 of the printed text) begins:
The severity of punishment is a proof [of] the corruption of manners.
To restrain a degenerate people from the commission of enormous
crimes the severest punishments are employed. The intended effects
are not produced – The mind gradually becomes habituated to them.
Horror is diminished and the number of crimes is not lessened.
Notetaking and Treatise Making at the Litchfield Law School
The Litchfield Law School, founded by Tapping Reeve in Litchfield,
Connecticut, was (arguably) the first American law school. It existed from
1782 to 1833 and graduated about 1,000 students who went on to
distinguished legal and political careers throughout the young nation. We are
fortunate that a large number of Litchfield law student notebooks have
survived, including 16 sets owned (and recently digitized) by the Harvard
Law School Library.
Unlike the messy and disorganized student notebooks familiar to (and
written by) many of us, students at Litchfield were expected to copy their
professors’ lectures word for word, and then recopy their notes later in the
evening into a “fair copy” notebook. Why the formality? The answer is that
Litchfield students regarded their notebooks very differently from law
students of today. At Litchfield, a major goal of the 14-month program was
to enable students to create their own permanent copies of the lectures. At a
time when law books were relatively difficult to acquire, Litchfield students’
notes comprised an encyclopedic legal treatise that accompanied them into
law practice and served them throughout their careers.
For more information: Karen S. Beck, One Step at a Time: The
Research Value of Law Student Notebooks, 91 LAW LIBR. J. 29 (1999).
Caleb Stark, Lectures of James Gould, 1824-1825.
HLS MS 4009; HOLLIS
Charles Samuel Stewart, Lectures of Reeve and Gould, 1818.
HLS MS 4076; HOLLIS 002119929
These two examples from Litchfield Law School students Caleb Stark and
Charles Samuel Stewart exemplify the Litchfield Law School ideal of student
notebook as personal legal treatise. These two examples are especially “fair”
fair copies. They feature ornate hand-lettered headings, beautiful script, and
other indications that these notebooks were used and treasured by their
owners long after they had left Litchfield.
The Harvard Law School: Law Student Notebooks as Laboratory
Manuals
The Harvard Law School Library’s Historical & Special Collections unit is
replete with books and manuscripts that illustrate the theme of notes and
notetaking. Our most unique and comprehensive offering is a collection of
manuscript class notes from more than 200 Harvard Law School students taken
over the course of some 160 years. These sets of class notes are valuable primary
sources for those who want to learn about how people learned, taught, and
understood the law.
The concept of law as a science took hold in the 19th century, and came to
fruition under the leadership of Christopher Columbus Langdell, who served as
Dean of the Harvard Law School from 1870 to 1895. Before Langdell, law students
listened to lectures and copied their notes verbatim into their notebooks, as seen in
our Litchfield Law School examples. But Langdell devised a new way of teaching
and learning called the case method. Under the guidance of their professors,
students were now required to study, dissect, analyze and synthesize the raw
materials of the law – legal cases – in order to arrive at their own understanding.
Langdell wrote that “[t]he library [was to lawyers and law students] what the
laboratory is to the chemist or the physicist and what the museum is to the
naturalist.” Fittingly, students’ notebooks now resembled working laboratory
notebooks, with crossouts, interleavings, and commentary inserted throughout – a
radical change from the neatly copied legal treatises made by students at Litchfield
only decades before.
Frederic Dodge, Class Notes of Frederic Dodge
Harvard Law School: 1868-1869
MSS Class Notes Collection; HOLLIS 2201239
Frederic Dodge (1847-1927) attended the Harvard Law School for one year,
from 1868 to 1869. During that year he filled three small, slender notebooks
with meticulous notes of his classes. He dated each lecture, noted the
professor (including HLS luminaries Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. and Emory
Washburn), and carefully recorded citations to cases mentioned in class. In
this respect his notes resemble many of the almost 200 sets of HLS class
notes in the Law Library’s Historical & Special Collections. What sets Mr.
Dodge’s notes apart is the fact that he was quite the doodler. Included in his
notes are doodles of his professors and fellow students, transcripts of bars of
popular music, animals, human legs, and a vignette of a young man and
woman dancing.
Samuel Williston, Class notes of lectures by James Barr Ames on
legal history taken at Harvard Law School, 1887-1888.
MSS Class Notes Collection; HOLLIS 2288553
Samuel Williston (1861-1963), was a student, and later a faculty member,
at the Harvard Law School. While teaching at HLS, he wrote his most famous
work, the multivolume treatise The Law of Contracts. But even in his student
days, Williston distinguished himself. Here is a volume of notes he took while
a student in Dean James Barr Ames’ Legal History class. Taken entirely in
shorthand, these notes served as the text from which Ames’ lectures on
legal history were printed.
S://SCOL/Exhibitions/Classes and Displays/Take Note 2012/Take Note Exhibit Labels.docx