Monday, December 2, 2019

Legal History on the Web

[We have the following announcement.  DRE]

Call for Information about Legal History Websites/Multimedia Projects for “Legal History on the Web”

Many of you may have had occasion to use “Legal History on the Web,” a gateway to online resources related to legal history that we started at Duke University in 2006.  This year we are undertaking a long-overdue update of the site, building on the platform first created by Mitch Fraas and revised by Ashton Merck, both working with and under the direction of Ed Balleisen.

We particularly invite suggestions for websites to include in a couple of new categories, as well as sites that engage with legal history outside the United States and the UK.

We are already well into the process of fixing broken links by updating URLs and revising annotations for existing websites where advisable.  If you know of any websites that require updates or that you think merit inclusion on “Legal History on the Web,” please send along the relevant information to Siobhan Barco, at siobhan.barco@duke.edu, before January 1, 2020.

Please feel free to send along suggested text for annotations to any new links that you nominate for inclusion.  That suggested text needs to be short – just a few lines that encapsulate what the site has to offer legal historians (see current annotations for examples).

Existing Categories:
  • Other Web Gateways to Legal History
  • Library Research Guides/General Reference Resources
  • Primary Source Databases/Web Archives (likely to be renamed in some way to convey expansive digital legal history projects that include GIS mapping or other kinds of digital analysis in addition to primary sources).
  • Law & Popular Culture  (possibly to be discontinued unless we locate a sufficient number of relevant sites)
  • Chronologies
  • Journals
  • Publishers with Legal History Lists
  • Blogs
  • Workshops, Seminars, and Working Groups
  • Scholarly Associations and Networks
  • Graduate Programs in Legal History/Law and Society
  • Reading Lists
  • Syllabi  (sorely in need of updating – syllabi disappear more frequently than perhaps any other category on the site)
  • Fellowships
  • Grants
  • Prizes
  • Job Market for Legal History
New Categories:
  • Companion Websites to Legal History Books
(See for example, Ed Balleisen’s Suckers & Swindlers in American History, a companion site to his Fraud: An American History from Barnum to Madoff, which includes an extensive bibliography, essay about sources and methods, essay about avenues for future research, compilations of fraud-related slang, and much else besides.)
  • Legal History Multimedia (e.g.) podcasts/documentaries
Thanks for your crowd-sourcing help as we seek to refresh this resource for the legal history community.

Ed Balleisen and Siobhan Barco

Edward Balleisen
Professor of History and Public Policy
Vice Provost for Interdisciplinary Studies
216 Allen Building
Duke University
Durham, NC  27708
Phone: (919) 684-1964