CARLISLE AND UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Penn State Dickinson Law’s H. Laddie Montague, Jr. Law Libraries have acquired a new scholarly collection that includes nearly 3 million pages of reports on historical legal cases dating as far back as the 1500s. The Nominative Reports database from HeinOnline will support faculty scholarship, student papers, briefs, historical research and research into the continuing influence of Law French — a dialect of French used in courts in England starting in the 13th century — on modern legal language.
Associate Dean for Library and Information Services Laura Ax-Fultz and Montague Law Library Director of Operations and Scholarship Rebecca A. Mattson said the collection offers a modern link to legal history. Faculty, students and other researchers can comb through a comprehensive historical record of legal decisions, practices and precedents from the time they were published.
“‘Nominative Reporters’ refers to the names of the individuals making the reports,” Ax-Fultz said. “If the court reporter’s name was Becky Mattson, then the report would be called the Mattson Report, which referred to both the person in the room taking notes and the set of books about cases that person created.”
That makes all of the documents primary sources, which are invaluable for legal scholarship.
“People have written many books about legal history and cases, but these documents are primary sources,” Ax-Fultz said. “You may find five or six versions of the same case in these reports, and scholarship related to that may consider whether interpretations or accounts differed.”
Mattson said this historical archive is especially relevant to current interpretations of the rule of law.
“We have seen recent Supreme Court opinions, such as ones related to the Second Amendment, reaching back to historical interpretations of the way things were written and considered at our nation’s founding,” Mattson said. “The information in this archive could inform future decisions, and professors and law students need access to that type of information when they are writing briefs for class or engaging in other scholarship.”
‘Really important for our collection’
Mattson said the library has already made some interesting discoveries within the database. While researching an upcoming presentation introducing the collection to Penn State Dickinson Law faculty and staff, Erin Seeton and Mattson stumbled upon Mutton’s Case, whose topic seemed appropriate for the month of Halloween.
“It ruled that calling someone a sorcerer is not a cause of action," Mattson said, referring to the court's finding that a person can't be held liable for damages for simply calling someone a sorcerer. "Since then, Erin has gleefully been looking for other cases dealing with witches and sorcery.”
Seeton, whose research area is legal history, wrote a blog post about the new collection. Her presentation will take place on Oct. 28 in room 114 Katz at Penn State University Park, with a Zoom connection to Carlisle, from 12:45 p.m. to 1:45 p.m.