Et Seq. » Historical & Special Collections

852 RARE: The Monthly Special – The Law Will Be Saved!

Karen Beck — Thu, 10 May 2012 21:27:43 +0000

John Y. Pashgian, Ut Lex Servetur

Historical & Special Collections recently received a gift of a terrific caricature drawn by John Y. Pashgian, HLS 1932. Titled “Ut Lex Servetur” (“ut lex servitur” = “the law will be saved”), it features cartoon drawings and autographs of well-known HLS faculty from the 1930s, including Samuel Williston, Felix Frankfurter, and Roscoe Pound. See if you can pick them out! In a wonderful bit of synergy, it turns out we also have the talented Mr. Pashgian’s HLS class notes. You can find details about the drawing on VIA, Harvard’s Visual Image Access database. We are most grateful to Barry S. Kramer for this addition to our collections.

852 Rare: Provenance Detectives – A New Exhibit

Lesley Schoenfeld — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 13:54:58 +0000

Magna carta cum statutis, ca. 1350. HLS MS 54, Hollis no. 3990350 Historical & Special Collections, Harvard Law School Library

Historical & Special Collections is pleased to announce the opening of a new exhibit, Provenance Detectives: Revealing the History of Six Library Artifacts.

This exhibit highlights six artifacts chosen for their fascinating and sometimes mysterious provenance, as well as their ability to illustrate the different paths provenance research takes. Artifacts featured in the exhibit include: a fourteenth century Magna Carta; furniture used by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.; and a painting of Justice John Marshall by eminent portrait artist Chester Harding.

The centerpiece of the exhibit is an early printed volume of English statutes once owned by early photography pioneer William Henry Fox Talbot (1800-1877). Included with the volume, on display for the first time since its provenance was discovered, is a leaf from the same volume that Talbot used to make a “photogenic drawing” of the text. Long thought to be lost, we are delighted to exhibit this exciting piece of photographic history.

Come learn more about the frustrating, fascinating hunt for artifact ownership. You never know what you might find!

This exhibit was curated by Mary Person, Lesley Schoenfeld, and Carli Spina and will be on view through August 12, 2012, in the Caspersen Room. The Caspersen Room is located on the fourth floor of the Harvard Law School Library, Langdell Hall and is open seven days a week from 9 to 5.

Visit the exhibit online too!

852 Rare: The Monthly Special – The “Unusual” Supreme Court Clerk Nominee

Margaret Peachy — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 13:37:50 +0000

“My second nominee is somewhat unusual.” This was the first line written by New York University School of Law Dean, Russell Niles, in support of Rita E. Hauser’s candidacy for a clerkship with Chief Justice Earl Warren. The letter was written in October of 1958 and what was “unusual” about the recommendation was that the candidate was a woman.

Dean Niles’ recommendation was indeed unusual; up until 1958 only one woman had served as a clerk to a Supreme Court Justice. Her name was Lucille Lomen and she clerked for William O. Douglas during the 1944-45 term.

Ms. Hauser did have an interview with the Chief Justice, but was not hired. As she mentions in a note accompanying the recommendation letter she recalls Warren saying that he was not ready to hire a female clerk. He was on the court for eleven more years and never did hire a woman. The next woman selected by any Justice did not happen until 1966.

Note accompanying letter of recommendation. Hollis 13105554.

A copy of the letter and Ms. Hauser’s note were recently given to the Library by Harvard Law School Dean Martha Minow. For such a short document it reveals much about a time in this country when sexism and gender discrimination were powerful adversaries for women.

The documents have been digitized and are available via the Hollis record.

Post contributed by Edwin Moloy, Curator of Modern Manuscripts and Archives.

Roger Fisher: A Celebration

Meg Kribble — Thu, 05 Apr 2012 14:57:15 +0000

Professor Roger Fisher in 1978, photograph by John Chapin

By Ed Moloy

Join Dean Martha Minow on April 11 at 4:30pm in the Caspersen Room when she and the Harvard Law School community celebrate the career of Roger Fisher, Samuel Williston Professor of Law, Emeritus. The event coincides with the opening of his papers by the Library’s Historical & Special Collections.

Professor Fisher is best known for his work in international law and negotiation. He co-founded the Harvard Negotiation Project in 1979 and co-authored the bestselling book, Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In in 1981. His expertise led to his involvement in high level negotiations around the world from El Salvador to South Africa to Iran.

The Roger Fisher Papers cover a period between the 1940s and the 2000s and document all aspects of his career from private sector to government to education. The bulk of the material reflects his work as a professor of law and as a member of the Harvard community. Also well-documented is his work on the television series “The Advocates” and material related to the publication of many of his books. The collection includes: correspondence, research notes, unpublished articles, briefs, drafts, manuscripts, reports, speeches, and newspaper clippings.

Please join Dean Minow on the 11^th to honor Roger Fisher and celebrate the opening of his papers. A reception and remarks will take place from 4:30-5:30 in the HLS Library’s Caspersen Room.

852 RARE: The Weekly Special – Radical Reading

Mary Person — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 19:10:26 +0000

Recently a tattered volume of twenty one English pamphlets, a gift of Dean Roscoe Pound to the Law Library in July 1929, crossed my desk in need of cataloging. All the pamphlets were printed between 1832 and 1837, most in London, a few in Newcastle. The title of the first work, from about 1835, gives an indication of the “radical” nature of the volume’s contents: George Edmonds’ appeal to the labourers of England, an exposure of aristocrat spies, and the infernal machinery of the poor law murder bill. Accompanied by appalling proofs of the alarming progress of cruelty, cannibalism, gluttony, ignorance, prodigality, lying, slandering, atheism, blasphemy, sedition, and sexual profligacy, in the high-priced aristocrat press, and especially the six shilling Quarterly review.

Title page of George Edmonds' appeal to the labourers of England

The pamphlets report on meetings and public dinners at taverns and music halls and reproduce stirring speeches (including that of Irish rebel Robert Emmet (1778-1803) two days before his execution for high treason). They reprint articles from “The Radical” and include long poems such as Wat Tyler; a dramatic poem, in three acts about a leader of the 1381 Peasants’ Revolt and Lord Byron’s controversial Cain; a mystery. Interestingly, several of the pamphlets are clearly marked across the title page as the property of the reading room of a “Working Men’s Association.”

Title page of The speech of Robert Emmet, Esq. published by Hetherington in 1836

The London Working Men’s Association was founded in 1836 by four men with a radical bent: Henry Hetherington (1792-1849) “penny press” publisher; printer/publishers James Watson (1799-1874) and John Cleave (1794 or 1795–1850), and cabinet maker turned writer, William Lovett (1800-1877).

“Besides circulating information for the good of the working classes, [the Working Men’s Association] wanted ‘to seek by every legal means to place all classes of society in possession of their equal, political, and social rights’. The Association discussed the ideas that would later form the central document of the Chartist movement: The People’s Charter. This was written by William Lovett, with the help of Francis Place, in 1838 and detailed the six reforms that comprised the core of Chartist doctrine.”

A few pamphlets in this volume are identified as having belonged, in 1837, to the Newcastle Working Men’s Association.Together this collection of pamphlets provides an intriguing look at writings reflecting the British working class labor movement and the stirrings of the Chartist movement.

An 1837 pamphlet, the subtitle of which (p.3) reads "Some remarks on a bill, called by those who would know better, a bill for pulling down our churches."

852 RARE: The Monthly Special – From the Barber Shop to the Bench

Lesley Schoenfeld — Tue, 28 Feb 2012 23:54:54 +0000

As Black History Month draws to a close, I wanted to take a moment to spotlight George Lewis Ruffin (1834-1886), Harvard Law School’s first black graduate. Ruffin was one of eight children born to free parents George W. (1800-1863) and Nancy Lewis Ruffin (1816-1874) in Richmond, Virginia. Committed to their children’s education, Ruffin’s parents hired a tutor to teach them English literature, Latin, and the classics. Knowing that Virginia was not an environment where their children could excel academically (the Virginia legislature had already prohibited blacks from learning to read), George’s mother moved her children to Boston in 1853 with the hopes of giving them a better education. George attended and graduated from the Boston Public Schools and in 1858 he married Josephine St. Pierre (1842-1924). That same year, in response to the racism of the time, George and Josephine moved to Liverpool, England

Portrait of George Lewis Ruffin by Melvin Robbins, Harvard Law School Library, VIA Record ID: olvwork599614

where they stayed for approximately six months. Upon their return to Boston, George, like his father before him, made a living as a barber. In the 1860s, Ruffin began to make his mark as an activist. Along with advocating for black suffrage, he participated in the 1864 National Negro Convention, as well as the 1865 National Negro Convention in Boston. It was around this time that Ruffin began reading law at the Boston firm of Jewell and Gaston. In 1868, Ruffin was accepted to Harvard Law School and in 1869 earned his LL.B., making him the Law School’s first black graduate.

Ruffin established a successful law practice and became politically active: he was elected in 1869 and 1870 to the state legislature and in 1876 he became the first African American elected to the Boston Common Council. In 1883 Governor Benjamin Butler appointed him judge to the Charlestown, Massachusetts Municipal Court, making Ruffin the first African American to hold such a position in Massachusetts.

George Lewis Ruffin truly was a man of “firsts.”

For additional resources on Ruffin see:

Long Road to Justice: The African American Experience in the Massachusetts Courts

Heslip-Ruffin Family Papers,1822-1946 at the Amistad Research Center

Ruffin Family Papers, 1832-1936 at the Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, Howard University

Harvard Law School catalog, 1868-69

American National Biography Online

African American Biographical Database

Davis, William T. Bench and Bar of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, volume 1. Boston History Company, 1895.

Styles, Fitzhugh Lee. Negroes and the law in the race’s battle for liberty, equality and justice under the Constitution of the United States. Christopher Publishing House: Boston, 1937.

Simmons, William J. and Henry McNeal Turner. Men of Mark: Eminent, Progressive and Rising. Cleveland, Ohio: G.M. Rewell & Co., 1887.

852 RARE: The Monthly Special – A favorite digital collection

Margaret Peachy — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 19:48:54 +0000

Over the years, Historical & Special Collections has taken on many digitization projects – from early studies of Roman law, to our collection of legal portraits, to the papers of some of the Law School’s distinguished alumni. One of my personal favorites is the Charles Claflin Davis Papers. Davis attended both Harvard College and the Law School, graduating in 1910. In the 1920s he became involved with the American Red Cross as Director of the Southwestern Base located in Constantinople. There he worked with Russian refugee camps and spent time in the schools and orphanages. His collection of papers, photographs and scrapbooks represents his time with the Red Cross in Constantinople and the gratitude expressed to him by the children in the camps.

A highlight of the collection is one scrapbook made by the Russian Towns Union Children’s Home No. 1. The children created a beautiful scrapbook for Davis to thank him for his work. Below is one of the pages:

A page from a scrapbook presented to Charles Claflin Davis by children in a Russian refugee camp. From The Charles Claflin Davis Papers, 1917-1923. Scrapbooks, box 6. Sequence number 711.

There are also some haunting photos of the refugee camps, such as this one that depicts a view of a Russian refugee camp showing men lying on the ground and lines of laundry hanging overhead. The camp sits outside the Dolma Bagtche palace in Constantinople, Turkey.

From the Charles Claflin Davis Papers, 1917-1923. Box 1. olvwork438394.

852 RARE: The Monthly Special – A Treat from the Early Days of Printing

Karen Beck — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 22:21:58 +0000

Newe Reformacion (Nuremberg, 1484): Hand-Colored Woodcut by Michael Wohlgemut

Regular readers of 852 RARE on Et Seq may wonder why the Weekly Special, featuring cool and unusual items from Historical & Special Collections, has morphed into a Monthly Special. We made the change because our department is undergoing a physical plant project that has required us to send many of our materials offsite from December 2011 until August 2012. Until our collection is back in place, we’ll still share news of the wonderful and the weird – just not as frequently. We hope you enjoy our posts!

Newe Reformacion (Nuremberg, 1484): Cover

December’s Monthly Special features the Newe Reformacion, a collection of the city of Nuremberg’s laws. It was printed in Nuremberg in 1484 by Anton Koberger. Books printed in Europe before 1501 are called incunables or incunabula, meaning that they were printed in the earliest days, or “cradle,” of printing.

Our copy features beautifully tooled front and back covers, an illuminated initial capital, and most notably of all, a hand-colored woodcut which shows the Nuremberg city arms flanked by St. James the Greater and St. Lawrence. Nuremberg artist Michael Wohlgemut (1434-1519) created the woodcut. Primarily a painter, Wohlgemut also produced woodcuts for book illustration and taught Albrecht Dürer, who went on to much greater artistic fame.

Newe Reformacion (Nuremberg, 1484): Detail

852 RARE: The Weekly Special – Manuscript collections now open for research

Margaret Peachy — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 17:14:50 +0000

In an effort to get more manuscript collections out of the backlog and available to researchers, the staff in Historical & Special Collections have been busy over the last six months organizing and describing nine new Modern Manuscript collections. Spanning both the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, these collections cover a variety of topics including an account of the Nuremberg trials from an unusual perspective, and an early Massachusetts court case involving Harvard and a bridge across the Charles river. For those fans of the classic Harvard Law School tale, The Paper Chase, we also have a collection of the author’s drafts now available. We are grateful to Amelia Wilber, Janet Katz, and Ana Enriquez, colleagues who participated in the library’s 20% program and volunteered their time to work on these projects. The staff of Historical & Special Collections are grateful for their work.

Take a moment to see what these collections are all about!

1. Joseph Goodbar Papers

2. Papers relating to Mexican government debts held by Louis Hargous and George Hammeken, 1840-1881

3. Papers relating to John Jay Osborn’s books: The Paper chase; The Only thing I’ve done wrong; and The Associates. 1971-1978 (inclusive).

4. Jule E. Stocker, “Draft of the book, “Drawing Will”

5. Charles River Bridge v. Warren Bridge. Records, 1828

6. E. Merrick Dodd Papers

7. Ingeborg Kalnoky collection of Nuremberg Guest House papers

8. Class notes of Irvin Bieser

9. Class notes of Leo Gottlieb

Post contributed by Edwin Moloy, Curator of Modern Manuscripts and Archives

852 RARE: The Weekly Special – One Man’s War

Mary Person — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 21:38:37 +0000

Among the more interesting surprises to emerge among books being moved from a Library storage area recently was a collection of newspaper articles by an escapee from a World War II German prisoner of war camp. The writer was Lucien Roger Lièvre, a former member of the French Army—who also happened to have earned an LL.M. degree from Harvard Law School in 1938.

Lièvre's 1938 HLS yearbook photo

It’s unclear where his serial account–written in English under the pseudonym Lucien R.L. Leroy–was published, but it came out while the war was still in progress; the Library acquired it in May 1942. Knowing that adds an immediacy and a poignancy to the now-yellowed newsprint account of deprivations—and ultimately, Lièvre’s escape to freedom.

In and out of a Nazi prison camp. By 1st lieut. Lucien R.L. Leroy of the French Army

Lièvre's escape route, as drawn by him after the fact.