Guides: American Legal History Research Guide: The Founding Era

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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

American Legal History by Kermit L. Hall; Paul Finkelman; James W. Ely
Call Number: KF 352 .A7 H35
Now in its 4th ed., this casebook's rich mix of narrative, original source excerpts and discussion notes continues to focus on how legal, political, economic and social changes have interacted over the last four centuries to create a uniquely American culture of law.
The Cambridge History of Law in America by Christopher Tomlins (Editor); Michael Grossberg (Editor)
Call Number: KF352 .C36 2008
This 3-volume set is a collection of essays on American Legal History topics written by leading scholars. Each volume focuses on issues within a particular time-period. Volume I covers colonization of the American continent to the creation and stabilization of the republic (1580-1815). Volume II covers the creation of the country to the end of the first World War (1789-1920) and Volume III covers "The American Century" (1920- present).
The Constitutional History of the United States by Francis Newton Thorpe
Call Number: KF4514 .T46
Publication Date: 1901
Volume I is notable for it's treatment of the American Founding Era 1765-1788 - "The votes in the Constitutional Convention are carefully recorded, the debates there and in the ratifying conventions fully summarized, and the sources of each provision noted. The same method is pursued with all the amendments." --H.L.B., Harvard Law Review 14 (1900-01) 553
The Framers' Coup by Michael J. Klarman
Call Number: KF4541 .K53
...[T]old largely through the voices of the participants, Michael Klarman's The Framers' Coup narrates how the Framers' clashing interests shaped the Constitution - and American history itself. The Framers' Coup is more than a compendium of great stories, however, and the powerful arguments that feature throughout will reshape our understanding of the nation's founding... Ultimately, both the Constitution's content and its ratification process raise troubling questions about democratic legitimacy... the Constitution was a significant departure from the more democratic state constitutions of the 1770s. Definitive and authoritative, The Framers' Coup explains why the Framers preferred such a constitution and how they managed to persuade the country to adopt it.
American Lawyers by Paul D. Carrington
Call Number: KF297 .C374
Lawyers played many different roles in the design, development, and maintenance of democratic government in the United States, and American Lawyers contains vignettes of the participation of hundreds of lawyers in diverse events of significance that occurred between 1775 and 2000. This book is an exploration of where our current laws come from, who played a role in creating them, and whether or not these law serve our country's culture in the best way possible.

Databases & Electronic Resources

America's Historical Newspapers
Refine search by era to focus on founding related materials. Select “dates and eras” – “Eras in American History” – then checkmark preselected eras surrounding the founding of the United States. Or use “Custom Date Range” to narrow your search results.
A Century of Lawmaking for a New Nation
Records from Congress up through the 42nd Congress. Also contains resources from the Constitutional Convention and Continental Congress. Great resource for analyzing the construction of a new nation and federal government.
Rotunda - Documentary History of the Ratification of the Constitution
"This landmark work in historical and legal scholarship draws upon thousands of sources to trace the Constitution’s progress through each of the thirteen states’ conventions. The digital edition allows users to search the complete contents by date, title, author, recipient, or state affiliation and preserves the copious annotations of the print edition."

HeinOnline This link opens in a new window
HeinOnline content is image-based in PDF format and fully searchable. My Hein allows users to save search queries and bookmark their search results after creating a user account. Primary material available are law journals, US Code, CFR, Federal Register, U.S. Statutes at Large, international treaties, session laws, and tax material.

HeinOnline - Bibliography of American Law (BEAL)
- Bibliography of American monographic and trial literature from the origins of the nation through 1860. Use this link to access BEAL for works printed 1860-1900.
HeinOnline - Early American Case Law
- Contains a wealth of original materials including all 30 books of the Federal Cases series.
HeinOnline - World Constitutions Illustrated - American Archives
- Scroll down specifically to American Archives books here. Resource is an early documentary history of the United States containing state records, debates, papers, etc. from discovery through 1787. (Click here to enter directly into vol. V of the 4th series).
HeinOnline - Prestatehood Legal Materials

A 50-state guide to materials surrounding the change from colony or territory to statehood. Vast amount of resources available for each state in the union from codes, journals and digests to websites, archives, and studies.

Digitized Document Collections

Colonial America
Advanced database comprising nearly 70,000 documents, all full text searchable due to "Handwritten Text Recognition" (HTR) technology. Be sure to hit the "Explore" tab in order to see a government structure chart based off a time slider and data association portions of the database.
Colonial State Papers
A collection fo over 7,000 digitized documents and 40,000 bibliographic entries (which detail the document's location in the National Archives in London) relating to the colonial period. This resource is of particular use when exploring the interaction of British legacy with colonial law.
Sabin Americana
A database of sources stemming from Joseph Sabin's Bibliotheca Americana, a multi-volume bibliography of books relating to America. Contains sources from 1500-1926.
The Annotated Newspapers of Harbottle Dorr, Jr.
A digitized collection of newspapers from 1765-1776 collected, annotated, and indexed by shopkeeper Harbottle Dorr, Jr. who sought “to form a political history” and offers a common man’s perspective of the events culminating in revolution.
The Sid Lapidus '59 Collection on Liberty and the American Revolution
Scanned collection of more than 150 works related to the American Revolution. Particular focuses here lay on the intellectual underpinnings of the Revolution and the Founding Era.

The Papers of the Founding Fathers

Benjamin Franklin Papers
Personal papers and correspondence of Benjamin Franklin as held by the Library of Congress. See the sidebar for other links and expert resources.
Columbia University - The Papers of John Jay
Provides access to 13,000 documents comprising more than 30,000 page images of the papers of Founding Father John Jay.
Rotunda - Founders Early Access
Contains papers of George Washington, James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, and John Adams (and Adams family correspondence). Generally full text searchable.
Rotunda Papers of John Marshall
Contains the papers of John Marshall in a fully searchable online environment.
Rotunda - Selected Papers of John Jay
Fully annotated and searchable papers of John Jay.

American Legal History Research Guide