Description: Contains the published records of the American colonies, documents published by state constitutional conventions, state codes, city charters, law dictionaries, digests, and other resources in American legal history. The term “primary sources” is used not in the historian’s sense of a manuscript, letter or diary, but rather in the legal sense of a case, statute or regulation. Detailed description of the contents:
- Early state codes - includes a comprehensive collection of the significant codes (a compilation of statutes) and code-like compilations from all states up to 1970. The significant codes were determined by legal bibliographers at Yale University consulting guides to legal research in individual states, the bibliography Pimsleur's Checklists of Basic American Legal Publications, and the Yale Law Library and Library of Congress collections.
- Constitutional conventions and compilations - includes reports, journals, proceedings, and debates published by conventions enacting or amending state constitutions. It also includes supplementary documents published by the conventions, including manuals, rules of order and information for use of delegates. The significant conventions were determined by legal bibliographers at Yale University consulting the bibliography State Constitutional Conventions from Independence to the Completion of the Present Union, 1776-1959, by Cynthia E. Browne, and the Yale Law Library and Library of Congress collections.
- City charters - includes the texts of enacted and proposed charters and ordinances in American jurisdictions, together with official documents relating to them, and opinions of legal officers of cities.
- Law dictionaries - includes all the major American law dictionaries up to 1970, as determined by Fred Shapiro, a preeminent authority on legal lexicography, consulting the Yale Law Library and Library of Congress collections and his own knowledge of the literature.
- Digests - Indexes to reported cases, arranged by subject.
- Published records of the American colonies- includes more than 60 titles that have been transcribed, edited, printed and indexed by six generations of scholars. It includes the records and documents that detail the legislation and court proceedings marking the nation's tumultuous beginnings.
Material comes primarily from the holdings of the Lillian Goldman Law Library at Yale University.
Coverage: 1620-1970