The Social Law Library, founded in 1803, is the second oldest

law library A law library is a special library used by law students, lawyers, judges and their law clerks, historians and other scholars of legal history in order to research the law. Law libraries are also used by people who draft or advocate for new l ...

in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

. It is located in the

John Adams Courthouse The Suffolk County Courthouse, now formally the John Adams Courthouse, is a historic courthouse building in Pemberton Square in Boston, Massachusetts. It is home to the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court (the state's highest court) and the M ...

Pemberton Square Pemberton Square (est. 1835) in the Government Center area of Boston, Massachusetts, was developed by P.T. Jackson in the 1830s as an architecturally uniform mixed-use enclave surrounding a small park. In the mid-19th century both private residen ...

in Boston, Massachusetts, the same building which houses the

Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court (SJC) is the court of last resort, highest court in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Although the claim is disputed by the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, the SJC claims the di ...

and the

Massachusetts Appeals Court The Massachusetts Appeals Court is the intermediate appellate court of Massachusetts. It was created in 1972 as a court of general appellate jurisdiction. The court is located at the John Adams Courthouse at Pemberton Square in Boston, the same ...

History

The history of the library is very much bound up in the history of the Supreme Judicial Court itself. Many of the proprietors of the library were chief justices of the Supreme Judicial Court, including

Theophilus Parsons Theophilus Parsons (February 24, 1750October 30, 1813) was an American jurist. Life Born in Newbury, Massachusetts to a clergyman father, Parsons was one of the early students at the Dummer Academy (now The Governor's Academy) before matricu ...

, Lemuel Shaw,

Horace Gray Horace Gray (March 24, 1828 – September 15, 1902) was an American jurist who served on the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, and then on the United States Supreme Court, where he frequently interpreted the Constitution in ways that increa ...

, and

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. (March 8, 1841 – March 6, 1935) was an American jurist and legal scholar who served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1902 to 1932.Holmes was Acting Chief Justice of the Un ...

The library was also caught up in the debates between the

Federalists The term ''federalist'' describes several political beliefs around the world. It may also refer to the concept of parties, whose members or supporters called themselves ''Federalists''. History Europe federation In Europe, proponents of de ...

, who wanted to see the

common law In law, common law (also known as judicial precedent, judge-made law, or case law) is the body of law created by judges and similar quasi-judicial tribunals by virtue of being stated in written opinions."The common law is not a brooding omnipresen ...

(based on

English law English law is the common law legal system of England and Wales, comprising mainly criminal law and civil law, each branch having its own courts and procedures. Principal elements of English law Although the common law has, historically, be ...

) received into the newly formed United States, and the Jeffersonians, who preferred to have a civil law-based system similar to the Napoleonic Code. The Federalists, who were prominent in Boston and integral to the library's founding, began importing English law books for local lawyers to use. The Supreme Judicial Court, needing a law library for their own use, permitted the library to be moved into the Court's offices in exchange for access to its many volumes. Meanwhile, the

Massachusetts General Court The Massachusetts General Court (formally styled the General Court of Massachusetts) is the state legislature of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The name "General Court" is a hold-over from the earliest days of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, ...

(the state legislature of Massachusetts) established the office of

Reporter of Decisions The Reporter of Decisions (sometimes known by other titles, such as Official Reporter or State Reporter) is the official responsible for publishing the decisions of a court. Traditionally, the decisions were published in books known as case repor ...

, which was the first office of its kind at the state level in the United States, and the first officially reported decision was '' Gold v. Eddy'' (1804). This turn of events allowed the public greater access to the decisions of the courts of Massachusetts, and in turn popularized the

legal system in the United States.

Today

Today, many lawyers in the Boston area use the library for

legal research Legal research is "the process of identifying and retrieving information necessary to support legal decision-making. In its broadest sense, legal research includes each step of a course of action that begins with an analysis of the facts of a probl ...

. Members pay a yearly fee for the privilege of being admitted to the library and using its facilities, with the exception of state, court or non-profit legal services organizations members. The library has over 450,000 volumes of printed materials, most of which can be searched using an online catalog accessible via the library's web site.

External links

Official homepage of the Social Law Library
Law libraries in the United States 1804 establishments in Massachusetts Legal history of the United States Massachusetts law History of Boston Libraries in Government Center, Boston Government Center, Boston {{Boston-struct-stub