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.
