Georgetown Law
Georgetown Law Library

American Legal History Research Guide

This research guide in American legal history includes materials dealing with settlement through the twentieth century.

The Founding Era

The Founding Era of United States history is rich with resources for the legal historian.  The records and correspondence of the founders of the United States of America have largely been preserved and made readily available to researchers.  This combines with the public nature of the debates surrounding the U.S. Constitution to create a robust offering of primary materials for modern scholars.  Navigate this page to find specific resources of note to access primary documents related to the Founding of the United States.

The resources here start with "Books" which primarily focuses on broad overviews and specific actions of individuals and groups in order to enact a new government.  "Database" links will point to collections held my major database aggregators.  "Digitized Documents" points towards specific resources that feature fully digitized document sets which can often be full text searched.  Finally, also linked are the collected and digitized papers of various founding fathers.

Books

Databases & Electronic Resources

Digitized Document Collections

The Papers of the Founding Fathers