From time to time we like to post historical essays written by recent Law School graduates. Today’s post is a work of intellectual history by Christopher Collins, a 2019 graduate of the University of Alabama School of Law who is currently a graduate student in the UA College of Communication and Information Sciences. Chris is…
The winner of the 2019 Harper Lee Prize for legal fiction is Sharon Bala’s The Boat People. Bala is an author living in St. John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador. She is the ninth author to win the prize authorized by the late Harper Lee for a book-length work of fiction that best illuminates the power of…
The latest addition to our collection of works dating from mid-seventeenth century England is a compilation of laws by one John Wilkinson. Its title is A Treatise Collected Out of the Statutes of this Commonwealth, and According to Common Experience of the Lawes, Concerning the Office and Authorities of Coroners and Sheriffs.
Several decades into the digital revolution, it is clear that digital devices have had an enormous impact upon the routines of literacy. This effect is every bit as profound as that brought about by the print revolution of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Moreover, the digital universe is arguably much broader than the universe of…
Today we announce some recent additions to our Special Collections holdings. In particular we’d like to call attention to some titles associated with the troubles, execution, and printed afterlife of England’s King Charles I (reigned 1625-1649).
Our “Preserved in Amber” series of posts seeks to celebrate unique and interesting objects, usually but not always a particular volume. The uniqueness typically comes from one striking feature—such as the correspondence between Hannis Taylor and J.B. Bury, pasted in Bounds’ copy of Taylor’s Science of Jurisprudence and featured in our October 12, 2016 post.…
This post offers a glimpse into the home study of United States Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black through descriptions of its furnishings and numerous books. Several books illustrate Black’s significant interest in the classics while Martin Luther King, Jr.’s book, Stride Toward Freedom, provides an example of the many books Black received as gifts containing…
The winner of the 2018 Harper Lee Prize for legal fiction is C.E. Tobisman’s Proof.
We regret to report the passing, on June 22, of Donald Richard Bounds. In 1998 the Bounds Law Library was named in memory of Donald Richard Bounds, Jr. and Russell Hampton Bounds.
The books presented in this post may seem to be nothing more than dusty old lawbooks, but they are in fact the mortal remains of Alabama’s frontier period. The energetic, mostly young men who made up Alabama’s legislatures faced the issues—national and local—of Jacksonian America. In response they spelled out their attitudes, self-interests, and startling…