With nearly two thousand linear feet of manuscripts, over two hundred thousand rare books, and more than seventy thousand visual images - photographs, prints, paintings, and objects - the Special Collections Department houses one of the world's most comprehensive collections of research materials for the study of legal history. Its chief mission is to acquire, catalog, preserve, and make available to researchers materials that document the history of the law in general and of Anglo-American law in particular.

The Department serves the research needs of the Harvard Law School community, the Harvard University community, and the scholarly world at large. Although the Department was organized as an administrative unit only in 1985, the history of the collecting of historical legal materials at the Harvard Law School Library dates to the founding of the Law School in 1817. Recent scholarship that has drawn on these collections conveys a good sense of the depth of the Library's holdings of primary research materials for legal history. The Department welcomes donations of materials consistent with its collecting policy.

Access & Hours

Reading Room Rules

Visiting

Access FAQs

Reference Assistance

Interlibrary Loan Requests

Caspersen Room

Reproduction Services

Permission to Publish

Locating Materials

HOLLIS

OASIS

VIA

HLS Graduates: Biographical
Research Guide

Harvard/Radcliffe Online
Historical Reference Shelf

History of Harvard Law School and Harvard University: Selected Sources

Other Electronic Resources

Rare Books

Manuscripts

The Red Set

Art & Visual Materials

Online Collections

Exhibits

History of Collections

Collecting Policy

Recent Scholarship

Fellowships

Staff Directory

FAQs

Special Collections Department
Harvard Law School Library
Langdell Hall
Cambridge, MA 02138