Explore legal material from the seventeenth century through the early twentieth century.

Together, the distinct collections that comprise The Making of Modern Law cover nearly every aspect of American and British law and dig deep into the legal traditions of Europe, Latin America, Asia, and other jurisdictions, both classic and contemporary. Encompassing a range of analytical, theoretical, and practical literature, these collections support and complement the traditional study of law by featuring valuable books from the most influential legal writers throughout history.

Download the brochure for The Making of Modern Law to understand how its 12 collections will add to the study of legal history at your institution.

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Collections

The Making of Modern Law: Landmark Records and Briefs of the U.S. Courts of Appeals, Part II: 1891–1950

This unique collection, digitized for the first time ever, brings together records and briefs from 1891–1950 that have most influenced modern writing and thinking about American law and American legal history.

The Making of Modern Law: Landmark Records and Briefs of the U.S. Courts of Appeals, Part I: 1950‒1980

This archive collection of courts of appeals documents provides a comprehensive review of trial history, including depositions, transcripts, and arguments. Addressing historical issues beyond legal theory and precedent, this collection unlocks material that was once mostly inaccessible to researchers

The Making of Modern Law: American Civil Liberties Union Papers, Part II: Southern Regional Office

The Making of Modern Law: American Civil Liberties Union Papers, Part II: Southern Regional Office is comprised of never-before-digitized materials documenting the ACLU’s legal battle to enforce the Civil Rights Act of 1964 in thirteen Southern states. This collection is an indispensable resource for understanding the complete history of the civil rights movement.

The Making of Modern Law: American Civil Liberties Union Papers, Part I: 1912-1990

The Making of Modern Law: American Civil Liberties Union Papers, Part I: 1912-1990, spans most of the 20th century. it focuses on civil rights, civil liberties, race, gender, and issues relating to the U.S. Supreme Court. The relevance of the collection to today’s curriculum and to current debates at both national and local levels serve many research needs.

The Making of Modern Law: Foreign, Comparative, and International Law, 1600-1926

This collection brings together foreign, comparative, and international titles, including the works of some of the great legal theorists, foreign legal treatises from a variety of countries, and books that compare legal systems, including ancient, Roman, Jewish, and Islamic law.

The Making of Modern Law: Foreign Primary Sources, 1600-1970

This collection offers legal historians a unique collection of the "primary sources" of law: statutes and codes of Great Britain, France, Germany, northern and central European jurisdictions in an easy-to-find online form, complementing the collection of treatises found in Foreign, Comparative, and International Law, 1600-1926.

The Making of Modern Law: Foreign Primary Sources, Part II

This resource provides an interpretive analysis with books on codes, focusing on Roman and canon law and covering southern Europe (Italy and Iberia), Latin America, Canada, Australia, India, and other jurisdictions.

The Making of Modern Law: Legal Treatises, 1800-1926

A comprehensive road map to US and British law, this resource opens up a wealth of hidden or previously inaccessible sources from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to scholars and students. It covers a watershed period of legal development and is the world's most comprehensive full-text collection of Anglo-American legal treatises.

The Making of Modern Law: Primary Sources, 1620-1926

This virtual gold mine of information for researchers of American legal history contains published records of the American colonies, documents published by state constitutional conventions, city and state codes, law dictionaries, and other materials.

The Making of Modern Law: Primary Sources, Part II, 1763-1970

Composed of US codes, constitutional conventions and compilations, and municipal codes, this collection enhances scholarly access to essential documents in American legal history through the second half of the twentieth century.

The Making of Modern Law: Trials, 1600-1926

Tracing the details of the courtroom dramas that rocked America, the British Empire, and the world, this archive provides unofficially published accounts of trials; official trial documents, and official records of legislative proceedings, administrative proceedings, and arbitration sessions. It is the world's most complete full-text collection of American and British trials.

The Making of Modern Law: U.S. Supreme Court Records and Briefs, 1832-1978

Researchers will find coverage of the most-studied cases, including many that resulted in landmark decisions. This collection provides transcripts, applications for review, motions, petitions, and other official papers brought before the highest court in the United States. It also includes information from cases that were denied certiorari.

Platform Features & Tools

Term Frequency

Researchers can see the frequency of search terms within sets of content to begin identifying central themes and assessing how individuals, places, events, and ideas interact and develop over time.

Topic Finder

By grouping commonly occurring themes, this tool reveals hidden connections within search terms—helping to shape research by integrating diverse content with relevant information.

Cross-Search Capability

Search across the content of complementary primary source products, including books, in one united, intuitive environment, enabling innovative new research connections.

Learn more about the Gale Primary Sources Platform »

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Crime, Punishment, and Popular Culture, 1790-1920

With 2.1 million pages of trial transcripts, police and forensic reports, detective novels, newspaper accounts, true crime literature, and related ephemera, this collection presents the broadest and deepest collection of materials supporting the study of nineteenth-century criminal history, law, literature, and justice. This quintessential resource enhances understanding of the intersection of law and society during a pivotal era of social change.

Eighteenth Century Collections Online: Part I

Eighteenth Century Collections Online contains 135,000 printed works comprising more than 26 million scanned facsimile pages of English-language and foreign-language titles printed in the United Kingdom between the years 1701 and 1800. While the majority of works in ECCO are in the English language, researchers will also discover a rich vein of works printed in Dutch, French, German, Italian, Latin, Spanish, and Welsh.

Eighteenth Century Collections Online: Part II

Expanding Eighteenth Century Collections Online, the titles in Part II have an emphasis on literature, social science, and religion. This second edition includes nearly fifty thousand titles and seven million pages from the library holdings of the British Library, the Bodleian Library, University of Cambridge, the National Library of Scotland, and the Ransom Center at the University of Texas.

U.S. Declassified Documents Online

U.S. Declassified Documents Online offers unique insights into the inner workings of the U.S. government. The collection links the most sensitive documents from all the presidential libraries and numerous executive agencies in a single, easily searchable database. This collection provides access to a broad range of declassified federal records spanning the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.