Historic legal and political documents online for first time

Monash students and staff now have access to facsimile images of historical documents such as Jeremy Bentham’s ‘Plan of Parliamentary Reforms’ (1817) or an authenticated copy of the Last Will and Testament of George Washington.  Researchers in criminology or legal history may be more interested in ‘An address on the law of murder in its medical aspects’, by John Charles Bucknell (1874).  Historians may wish to view ‘A woman of England’s’ address to the peers of the realm on ‘The women of England and R. Wortley’s marriages bill’, from 1850.

These fascinating examples are among the riches to be found in a major new database, The Making of Modern Law.  The database brings together nearly 10 million pages of legal history.  It is comprised of more that 22,000 British and American legal treatises, which are secondary source works such as letters, speeches, pamphlets, casebooks and practice books, dated between 1800 and 1926.  It is fully searchable and browsable, and provides facsimile images of the original documents, maps and illustrations. The archive comprehensively covers the major period of legal development during the 19th and early 20^th centuries.

The Making of Modern Law would be of interest to students and staff doing research in not only legal history or crime and society, but also general history, politics, social sciences, religion and economic history.  To view these documents in the original may otherwise require travel to libraries in America such as Harvard and Yale. 

After a successful trial with positive feedback from many academic staff, the Monash University Library has purchased perpetual access to half of the database, Treatises on British Law.  It is planning to purchase perpetual access to the other half (Treatises on American Law) in 2006, funds permitting.  In the meantime the complete database is available for use by the Monash community.  The Making of Modern Law is available through the library’s database page.

28 October 2005

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