Collections
Court Records
The Law Library served as a depository for duplicate records and briefs of the Louisiana Supreme Court and also the Louisiana Courts of Appeal, Circuits 1-5 until 2010. All deposited records and briefs remain the property of the courts. The Law Library received court records at the discretion of the courts. There are gaps in our holdings. Holdings include cases for which the appeal process has been exhausted.
Dates of coverage:
- Louisiana Supreme Court, 1912-2009
- Louisiana Courts of Appeal, 1960-2009
The court records and briefs are stored off-site, but may be checked out for a period of twenty days, beginning on the date the record is mailed.
Please complete this form to request court records.
Requests must be received no later than noon on Tuesday. Requests received after that time will be held for retrieval on Tuesday of the following week.
Foreign, Comparative, and International Law Collection
The Foreign, Comparative, and International Law Collection consists of over 90,000 volumes and comprises approximately twenty percent of the Law Library’s holdings. The third floor of the library is entirely devoted to housing this collection. The collection includes primary and secondary sources about and from countries around the world, and contains materials in English, French, and a variety of other languages. The collection is especially rich in comparative law resources, as well as in resources from and about those countries and territories that have had a particular impact on the development of Louisiana law, or whose laws and legal systems are frequently used in comparison with the laws and legal system of Louisiana.
Government Documents
The LSU Law Library is a selective depository for United States government publications. Our item selection focuses on legal and law-related documents, including congressional materials, administrative regulations, administrative decisions, and presidential papers. We are open to the public.
Selected government publications are integrated into the LSU Law Library collection; bibliographic information about those materials and, selectively, links to the location of those materials available online, are accessible through the Law Library’s online catalog. Print and electronic tools to find specific congressional materials such as bills, hearings, and committee reports are also available. Many of our government publications are in electronic or microfiche formats, and some are in paper form. If you need assistance in locating and retrieving a government publication, regardless of format, please ask. Reference assistance for government publications is available from the Law Library’s Government Information Librarian (225-578-8815) and the Reference Desk on the first floor of the library (225-578-4042). The Government Information Librarian is on duty from 7:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday, with additional assistance via the Reference Desk during the Fall and Spring semesters. Both telephone and walk-in questions will be addressed.
Electronic access to a wide variety of government information is available through govinfo, a service of the U.S. Government Publishing Office. Govinfo, the Catalog of U.S. Government Publications, the FDLP Basic Collection, and other government information sources on the Internet, are available at the Library’s public computers. Patrons may read or download information.
Paper government publications circulate according the Law Library’s general circulation policy.
Louisiana Materials
Louisiana materials, a special assemblage of about 13,000 volumes, is shelved on the second floor, with some titles located in the Rare Book Room. Louisiana legal materials are collected mainly through the state depository program and direct agency contact. Core items include legislative calendars, journals, résumés, bills and acts, as well as agency reports and administrative decisions. Non-depository materials found in this collection include a complete set of Louisiana case reporters dating back to 1809 including Louisiana Reports, Southern Reporter, and the Louisiana Courts of Appeals Reports. Nominative reporters such as Martin and Robinson are found here. Older editions of the Louisiana civil code, statutes and digests, and older editions of legal treatises and final law school exams are also included.
The Louisiana Collection is split into two parts, classified materials shelved on the second floor and the unclassified materials shelved on the third floor north wall. The unclassified materials include reporters (early reporters and the Southern Reporter), acts, and statutes. Unclassified materials do not circulate.
Microform Collection & Index
The general microform collection is housed on the first and third floor and is available to patrons during all library hours. Government Documents in microform are located on the fourth floor. The general microform collection includes the following:
- 18th, 19th and 20th century American legal treatises
- International collections and materials
- Legal newspapers
- Louisiana legislative materials
- Native American Indian law
- Selected urban documents for major Louisiana cities
- Special reports
- State Attorney General opinions
- State bar exams
- State bar journals
- State session laws
- Supreme Court Records and Briefs/CIS (Current)
To find a title in the microform collection, search the Library Catalog to find the filing title, then search the Microform Index to find the physical location of the microform.
There is a microform reader/printers available in the Microform Reading Room on the 1st floor and in the Government Documents Department on the fourth floor.
Rare Books Collection
The Law Library’s rare books collection houses materials that require special handling because of their rarity, condition, monetary value, or special research value. It includes early and modern printed books, manuscripts, and ephemera, with an emphasis on civil law, comparative law, and legal translation.
The Law Library maintains a comprehensive collection of rare books and materials relating to Louisiana legal history, including the history and development of the Louisiana Civil Code. This collection includes historical editions of the Civil Code, treatises on Louisiana law and the civil law tradition, comparative law sources and works of legal history discussing the development of Louisiana law, and works by influential lawyers, judges, legal scholars, and other academics whose work has had a notable impact on the development and understanding of Louisiana’s legal tradition.
The Law Library also maintains a representative collection of rare books and materials relating to civil law systems that have had a particular influence on the development of the Louisiana legal tradition or that are the subject of frequent comparison with the Louisiana civil law system. This collection includes copies of various foreign civil codes, books and treatises on the laws and legal systems of relevant countries, works of comparative legal scholarship, and a number of medieval law books relevant to research in the French legal tradition. The Law Library also maintains a small selection of rare books and materials relating to Roman law and canon law.
Archival Collections
The LSU Law Library Archival Collections record the history of the Law School, its faculty, and alumni, and their contributions to legal scholarship in Louisiana and across the globe. In addition, they contain one-of-a-kind and rare materials relevant to the legal history of Louisiana.
Highlights of the collection include the papers Paul M. Hebert created during his tenure as a judge at the US Military Tribunal at Nuremberg and Ira S. Flory’s correspondence from the 1920s regarding the expansion of the Law Library’s holdings, in addition to Hebert’s personal speech files and his records from the Tidelands case.
Hours
Monday-Friday, 8:00 a.m.-4:00 p.m. (by appointment only). To set up an appointment please contact lawarchives@lsu.edu.
More About our Archives
For more information, please see the Law Library’s Archival Collections page