The diverse websites described below take a variety of creative approaches to displaying and honoring aspects of the history of law and jurisprudence.

The Avalon Project at Yale Law School

http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/avalon.htm

“The Avalon Project is dedicated to providing access via the World Wide Web to primary source materials in the fields of Law, History, Economics, Politics, Diplomacy and Government,” pre-18th Century through current times.”

The Project staff mounts digital documents that can be browsed by Century, by Title, or by Document Collection.

California Supreme Court Historical Society

http://www.cschs.org

A work in progress, there are several undeveloped links, but the main one, “history of California courts” includes a fascinating and comprehensive collection of photographs of historic California’s county courthouses.

Famous Trials

http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/ftrials.htm

Beginning with the Trial of Socrates, and ending with the Impeachment Trial of Bill Clinton, this is a beautifully organized and graphically excellent website. There are Links from each trial’s overview to its contemporary primary and secondary sources, including trial transcripts, also photographs and drawings.

Law in Popular Culture Collection

http://tarlton.law.utexas.edu/lpop/

The Tarlton Law Library, University of Texas School of Law houses this unique collection, dedicated to describing studying the historical development of the image of the lawyer through popular culture media-including books, film, artwork and poetry.

100+ Books About Law: Suggested Reading for Students, Prospective Students and Members of the Bar.

http://lawlib.lclark.edu/students/reading_list/index.php

From the web page of Lewis and Clark College’s Law Library, this is a simple form of bibliographic essay, with links to the library’s online card catalog entries for the titles described. A prominent theme of the essay is the historical development of ideas in practice and jurisprudence.

”The list includes many works intended to make the study of law by the case method more coherent and rewarding. Other books were selected because of their immense influence on contemporary American law or their value for the formation of professional goals and values.” (From the website)

Oyez, Oyez-the US Supreme Court Multimedia Page

http://www.oyez.org/oyez/frontpage

Includes a section “On this Day” that informs us of past Opinions rendered throughout the Court’s history, by calendar date.

Picture History

http://www.picturehistory.com/

“The primary source for History Online”, this is a digital library of archival images, downloadable for personal use. There are also professional, commercial components to the site, sponsored by General Electric. Click on “Law and Criminal Justice” or choose among a dozen other categories of images.

The Proceedings of the Old Bailey, London 1674 to 1834

http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/

“A fully searchable online edition of the largest body of texts detailing the lives of non-elite people ever published, containing accounts of over 100,000 criminal trials held at London’s central criminal court.” The site contains content from 101,102 trials.

Women’s Legal History Biography Project

http://www.law.stanford.edu/library/wlhbp/

This project of the Law Library of Stanford Law School provides links to full-text articles and biographical material. The site appears to be in development, as not all indexed names have content behind their links. “Our main tool is biography, a study of the lives of the individual women lawyers, and the movements and philosophies that inspired and sustained them."

July / August 2006