The Personal Library and Scholarship
In my earlier posts, I mentioned the contribution that lawyers have made to libraries and to our understanding of the law. Speaking of a personal library, the prime example must be the Ess Collection, which was the largest individual contribution to the Harvard Collection. There is a delightful essay by Ess which describes the library of a Sixteenth Century English Lawyer at .
Ess was an interesting chap – I found it fascinating that his collection was largely stored at Sullivan and Cromwell – see http://www.law.harvard.edu/faculty/martin/ess_bio.htm
And there is a nice summary of Ess’ place among Harvard benefactors at http://hul.harvard.edu/publications/letters011119.pdf at page 9. Not all the scholars are found in the law schools.
Coming closer to home, there is a delightful examination of the life of the mind of one of the leading civilian judges, a wonderful gentleman I met almost twenty years ago called Albert Mayrand. Exploring his library as a way of probing the thinking of a great judge is found at http://www.utpjournals.com/product/utlj/531/531_Fernandez.html
As we move to digital libraries, I can’t imagine anyone poring over Ian Binnie’s Bookmarks in quite the same way.
The world we are losing….
The 1911 Britannica (see I can spell it correctly) refers at http://12.1911encyclopedia.org/R/RA/RASTELL_WILLIAM.htm to Justice Rastell.
By virtue of a special commission issued by the barons of the Exchequer on the occasion an inventory of his goods and chattels was taken. It furnishes an excellent idea of the modest nature of the law library (consisting of twenty-four works) and of the chambers of an Elizabethan judge (see Law Magazine, February 1844).