Nation Building and Law Collections: the Remarkable Development of Comparative Law Libraries in the United States*

LAW LIBRARY JOURNAL Vol. 109:4 [2017-26] Nation Building and Law Collections: The Remarkable Development of Comparative Law Libraries in the United States* David S. Clark** This article focuses on the evolution of comparative law libraries in the United States, in particular on the Law Library of Congress. It argues that much of the impetus behind this development was a self-conscious component of nation building. This effort led many American law libraries to build exceptional collections of foreign, comparative, and international law. Introduction .........................................................500 History of the Library Until 1500 .......................................503 History of the Library in the Early Modern Era ...........................506 University Libraries .................................................507 The Vatican Library ................................................510 Royal and Noble Libraries ...........................................510 The Impact of the Protestant Reformation .............................511 Development of Major Libraries in the United States ......................512 Private and Public Libraries ..........................................512 The Library of Congress .............................................516 The Role of Copyright and Legal Deposit in the Growth of Libraries .........519 Europe ..............................................................519 United States. 521 The Emergence of National Libraries ..................................523 The Development of Law Libraries ......................................526 Europe ..............................................................526 United States in the Nineteenth Century ...............................527 Types of U.S. Law Libraries: 1900 to 1960 ..............................530 European Law Libraries in 1970 ......................................531 The Issue of Library Size Since 1980 ..................................533 Law Library Associations. .537 * © David S. Clark, 2017. I am grateful to Peter L. Roudik, Director of the Global Legal Research Center at the Law Library of Congress and Ann C. Kitchel and Galin Brown, respectively Willamette University law library director and access services manager, for their helpful assistance. I thank the Willamette College of Law for a summer research grant that facilitated completion of the research for this article. ** Maynard and Bertha Wilson Professor of Law, Willamette University College of Law, Salem, Oregon; Past President, American Society of Comparative Law (2002–2006). 499 500 LAW LIBRARY JOURNAL Vol. 109:4 [2017-26] Comparative Law Libraries in the Twentieth Century. .538 United States. 538 Europe ...........................................................541 Harvard Law Library ...............................................542 Los Angeles Law Library ............................................543 The Law Library of Congress ...........................................544 Initial Law Library Development and Support for Foreign Law ...........544 Foreign and Comparative Law: 1900 to 1950 ...........................548 Foreign and Comparative Law Since 1950 .............................550 The End of the Book? .................................................554 The Law Division of the Library of Congress is making a systematic effort to bring its collection of foreign law to a state of high efficiency. The growing interest in comparative law manifested by legislators, lawyers and scholars has indicated the utility and stimulated the acquisition of a well-developed laboratory of comparative law, in which shall be represented the best legal literature of the important states of the world. May 3, 1911, Librarian of Congress1 Introduction ¶1 There is a straightforward connection between law and legal institutions and the creation or development of a sophisticated polity. Of course, law is more important in some cultures than in others. An indicator of this variability is the emergence of substantial collections of written legal materials, prominent even in some classical societies. I survey a few examples prior to 1500 and then compare notable libraries in the early modern era, identifying law collections when possible. ¶2 In the nineteenth century, the task of nation building spread widely beyond the early European nation-states of England, France, and Spain. The independence of the United States from Great Britain and the Spanish-American republics from Spain provide useful illustrations in the New World to compare with the consolidat- ing polities of Germany and Italy in Europe.2 In the post–World War II period, schol- arly interest in nation building extended to reach new nations in the developing world created by decolonization.3 Because many countries outside Europe failed to develop legal institutions along the lines social scientists and lawyers had predicted, a new generation of scholars has attempted different enquiries and explanations.4 1. Guides to Foreign Law Literature, 4 Law Libr. J. 35 (1912); see Jane Aiken Rosenberg, The Nation’s Great Library: Herbert Putnam and the Library of Congress, 1899–1939 (1993); infra ¶¶ 138–144. 2. See generally John Henry Merryman, David S. Clark & John Owen Haley, Comparative Law: Historical Development of the Civil Law Tradition in Europe, Latin America, and East Asia 473–509, 513–29 (2010). A classic analysis of complex nation-building processes in Europe and the United States is Samuel P. Huntington, Political Modernization: America vs. Europe, 18 World Pol. 378 (1966). 3. See, e.g., Nation-Building (Karl W. Deutsch & William J. Foltz eds., 1963). 4. See, e.g., Nation Building, State Building, and Economic Development: Case Studies and Comparisons (S.C.M. Paine ed., 2010); State Building and Development (Keijiro Otsuka & Takashi Shiraishi eds., 2014); Michael J. Trebilcock & Ronald J. Daniels, Rule of Law Reform and Devel- opment: Charting the Fragile Path of Progress (2008); Michael J. Trebilcock & Mariana Mota Prado, Advanced Introduction to Law and Development (2014). Vol. 109:4 [2017-26] NATION BUILDING AND LAW COLLECTIONS 501 ¶3 National libraries began to emerge in the eighteenth century in Europe as part of the process of nation building. There were already twenty national libraries in 1800.5 The explicit prominence that political leaders placed on the distinctiveness (and superiority) of their ethnicity, language, culture, and religion that defined a nation carried over to law. The era of European-wide jus commune written in Latin was giving way to national law in the vernacular, supported by national legal institutions.6 This phenomenon of nationalism affected most aspects of culture and society, even national museums that promoted a particular people’s values and myths.7 ¶4 This article focuses primarily on the evolution of comparative law libraries in the United States, in particular on the growth of the Law Library of Congress (hereafter LC Law Library). I argue that much of the impetus behind this development, with its emphasis on establishing the place of the country among the leading legal systems of the world, was a self-conscious component of nation building. This effort led many American law libraries to build exceptional collections of foreign, comparative, and international law. ¶5 The new nation in America that emerged after victory in the war of independence against Great Britain instituted a written Constitution that promoted popular sovereignty and law instead of reliance on rule by a king or queen. The Constitution called for a national government of limited and enumerated powers that shared governing with strong local autonomy in states. It further separated national authority into three branches along functional lines that put the task of lawmaking first in the Constitution’s Article I.8 In 1800, Congress established a library to encourage intelligent popular sovereignty and to facilitate the broad research neces- sary for drafting useful legislation. By 1832, Congress recognized the special char- acteristics of law as a discipline and established the LC Law Library.9 These actions were steps in a lengthy process of national state building.10 Compared to European examples, they also illustrate the distinctiveness of American government, law, and 5. For the development of this point, see infra ¶¶ 72–78. 6. See Merryman, Clark & Haley, supra note 2, at 443–509, 513–29. Even prior to this period, libraries had served as a means to preserve some sense of common identity among a political, reli- gious, or cultural group. Michael H. Harris, History of Libraries in the Western World 6–10 (4th ed. 1995). 7. See generally National Museums and Nation-Building in Europe 1750–2010: Mobilization and Legitimacy, Continuity and Change (Peter Aronsson & Gabriella Elgenius eds., 2015). A good example concerns the Louvre Museum in Paris during the two decades following the French Revolu- tion. French officials consciously built a place where the new relationship between citizens and the nation came alive symbolically. The museum “asserted French pre-eminence within a community of nations that shared a common elite art culture.” Carol Duncan, Ritual in the Early Louvre Museum, in The Cultural Politics of Nationalism and Nation-Building 87 (Rachel Tsang & Eric Taylor Woods eds., 2014). For the story of John Jay’s visit to the Louvre in 1866 and the founding of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, see id. at 100. 8. See Mark R. Wilson, Law and the American State,

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