Harvard Law School Library

Throwback to 1906...

The Harvard Law School Library is located within Langdell Hall, which was commissioned in 1905. For this rendering, D.A. Gregg, an architectural draftsman well-known for his pen and ink drawings, used graphite and watercolor on paper. It is signed in purple watercolor in the lower right (between the sidewalks). This rendering differs from what was constructed.

When the Law School outgrew Austin Hall, Dean James Barr Ames engaged the architects Shepley, Rutan and Coolidge in 1905 to design a new building that would contain classrooms, faculty offices, and the library. The new building, the southern portion of the present Langdell Hall, was partially occupied in 1907 and fully occupied in 1908. Shepley, Rutan and Bulfinch proposed a design that was larger than what was actually built and closer to the post 1929 Langdell Hall.

In 1929, the northern and western portions of the building were completed under the direction of Coolidge, Shepley, Bulfinch and Abbott. In 1997, Langdell Hall was completely renovated under the direction of Shepley, Bulfinch, Richardson and Abbott., Materials/techniques: Graphite and watercolor on paper.

Citation: Langdell Hall architectural rendering by D.A. Gregg, 1906? HOLLIS olvwork720033, Harvard Law School Library, Historical & Special Collections

A few Scottish as we bid safe travels to the . Haste ye back!

One of the many ways HLS Library serves our community is through HLS Beyond, a program that seeks to address concepts and practical skills at the forefront of law, technology, politics, the arts, and ... beyond. This past year, program manager Emily Neill offered events centered around technology in general and AI specifically, student loans, tariffs, a tiny desk concert featuring student musicians, and much more. Harvard Law Today recently featured a program related to copyright law and AI. Watch our website to see what programs she has in store for the next academic year!

To read the article, visit https://hls.harvard.edu/today/
To watch the video, visit https://hlsbeyond.law.harvard.edu/events-2025-26/
For more programming, visit https://hls.harvard.edu/library/



Image: Boston University Law School Professor Jessica Silbey and HLS Professor Rebecca Tushnet were among the panelists at a recent HLS Beyond program. Source: www.youtube.com/watch?v=vwQ1OT2ZF7s

It's that time of year! HLS Library summer hours:
Open: Monday to Friday, 8:30 a.m. to 7 p.m.
Closed: Saturday and Sunday

On this day in 1934, Judge Learned Hand (1872-1961) was issued an invoice for a suit he had tailor-made in London. Hand earned his LL.B. from Harvard Law School in 1896. HLS is in possession of 116 linear feet of materials related to Hand's private and public life. The 65,000 items in the collection include correspondence, opinions, memoranda, reports, legal documents, bank statements, newspaper clippings, memorabilia, and much more. To read more about the collection, refer to “Revisiting Learned Hand’s Tailor” on our blog.



Citations:
Invoice: Credit: Alfred Webb Miles & Co. Ltd. invoice to Judge Learned Hand, June 15, 1934, Box 57, Folder 39, HOLLIS 990006016050203941, Harvard Law School Library, Historical & Special Collections
Photograph: Learned Hand, ca. 1910, HOLLIS olvwork371847, Harvard Law School Library, Historical & Special Collections

This week, Historical & Special Collections hosted a small pop-up display for our Harvard Library colleagues as part of an open house event for the SPARC (Special Collections and Archives Council) spring 2026 meeting.

Libraries chose a few unique items from their collections to highlight. Among the items HLS Library chose to share were (1) an HLS Herstories Project scrapbook with a handknit pouch (2004); and (2) a third-year paper by Evan Wolfson, JD'83, titled “Same-Sex Marriage and Morality: The Human Rights Vision of the Constitution” (1983).

(1) The Harvard Law School Herstories Project scrapbook is a compilation of artwork and essays about the experiences of women at Harvard Law School, created in 2004 for Professor Lani Guinier’s advanced seminar: Critical Perspectives on the Law: Issues of Race, Gender, Class and Social Change. Professor Guinier was the first woman of color granted tenure at HLS, where she taught from 1998 to 2017.
*Citation: Harvard Law School Herstories Project scrapbook (2004). HOLLIS no. 99161555753503941, Harvard Law School Library, Historical & Special Collections small manuscript collection.

(2) Evan Wolfson, JD'83, is the founder of Freedom to Marry and teaches at Yale University and Georgetown Law School. This third-year paper served as the basis for his seminal and lauded work Why Marriage Matters: America, Equality, and Gay People’s Right to Marry. He is considered the creator of the movement that won the right for same-sex couples to marry in the United States. This paper has been digitized and is freely available at https://bit.ly/hlslwolfson.
*Citation: Wolfson, E. (1983). Same-sex marriage and morality: the human rights vision of the Constitution. HOLLIS no. 99156040382403941, Harvard Law School Library, Historical & Special Collections.

A highlight of the year for HLS English Legal History students is their annual visit to Historical & Special Collections. This year’s display featured 22 items from the collection, including 13th-century manor rolls, a first edition of the very first printed English legal treatise, year books, and an 18th-century judge’s notes from Old Bailey proceedings.

Photos: Professor Charles Donahue (photo 1, center, blue sweater), Professor Elizabeth Kamali (photo 2, right, red jacket), and teaching fellow Dolan Gallagher (photo 3, left, yellow shirt) leading students through over 400 years of legal history, including HLS MS 4 (photo 4, citation below). Photo credit: Sarah Wharton

Citation: Year book reports, 1329-1337, HLS MS 4, HOLLIS 990036773210203941, Harvard Law School Library, Historical & Special Collections.

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It's a little quieter in the library these days = purrfect for napping!

The Supreme Court’s shadow docket has been in the news and is a subject of continued scholarly interest. HLS research librarian Deanna Barmakian has turned a light on the shadow docket and the availability of filings from these important cases. To learn more, see our blog for "What we do in the shadows: Library access to Supreme Court shadow docket filings."

Photo sources:
The Supreme Court image: Wikimedia, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Supreme_Court.jpg
Docket image: National Archives, https://perma.cc/M8VD-U8BR

Class Day 2026! 🎓 Langdell Hall understood the assignment for Commencement Week! 🎓