Getting Started
Starting Your Research
Understand your era & the context for your questions:
Sources vary by time period. Make sure you understand how legal and political materials were created, published, and distributed during your time period. How might someone at the time have found and used the information you need?
Research guides and reference works like encyclopedias and bibliographies can help give you context for your research.
Start with secondary sources:
Start your historical research in secondary sources such as books, journal articles and newspapers.
Find primary sources:
Use primary sources to dig deeper into your topic and find accounts and artifacts of events as they happened.
Many primary sources from the founding era are available online, on microfilm or in print.
In addition, special collection libraries and archival repositories here at Harvard and elsewhere are a great source of unique and rare books, historical manuscripts, documents, photographs, maps, artifacts, and numeric data.
Who else cares?
What other organizations might care about your topic? Historical societies, museums, governmental entities, policy organizations, and genealogical societies may all hold collections or produce publications that can give insight into the people and issues you are researching.
Don't waste time. Ask Us!
Don't spin your wheels! Make an appointment with one of us to dig deeper into specific resources for your projects.
Research Guides & Reference Sources
General American Legal History
The Yale Law School Guide to Research in American Legal History by ISBN: 9780300118537Publication Date: 2018
Constitutional History Research Guides
Encyclopedias
Encyclopedia of the American Constitution by Call Number: Harvard Law School Library Offsite Storage KF4548 .E53 1986ISBN: 0029186102Publication Date: 1986
The Constitutional Convention Of 1787 by Call Number: Harvard Law School Library Reference KF4510 .V55 2005ISBN: 1851096698Publication Date: 2005
Bibliographies
A Comprehensive Bibliography of American Constitutional and Legal History, 1896-1979 by Call Number: Harvard Law School Library Offsite Storage KF4541 .H34 1984ISBN: 0527374083Publication Date: 1984See also the 1980-1987 supplement
Bibliography and Reference List of the History and Literature Relating to the Adoption of the Constitution of the United States, 1787-8 by Call Number: Harvard Law School Library Reference KF4501 .F67 2003ISBN: 1584772689Publication Date: 2003 (originally published 1896)
Constitutional Texts
World Constitutions Illustrated
- World Constitutions Illustrated (HeinOnline)Access via Harvard Key.
HeinOnline World Constitutions Illustrated provides access to contemporary and historical documents, as well as resources of interest to scholars researching the constitutional and political development of the nations of the world. World Constitutions Illustrated includes, for each nation represented copies of the current constitution in its original language format accompanied by at least one English translation, secondary materials related to constitutional law and history, and links to online sources such including official government websites.
Jurisdiction: Global
U.S. Contents:
- Constitutions and Fundamental Laws
- Commentaries & Other Relevant Sources
- Scholarly Articles Chosen by Our Editors
- Bibliography of Select Constitutional Works
- External Links for United States of America
Constitution Annotated
- Constitution Annotated: Analysis and InterpretationThe Constitution Annotated provides authoritative, objective and non-partisan legal analysis of Supreme Court case law and, where relevant, historical practices that have defined the text and interpretation of the Constitution
- Constitution Annotated: A Research GuideUser's guide for the Constitution Annotated.
The Founders Constitution
The Founders' Constitution by Call Number: Harvard Law School Library GEN KF4502 .F68 1987ISBN: 9780226463872Publication Date: 5 volumes, 1987Hailed as "the Oxford English Dictionary of American constitutional history," the print edition of The Founders' Constitution has proved since its publication in 1987 to be an invaluable aid to all those seeking a deeper understanding of one of our nation's most important legal documents. In this unique anthology, Philip B. Kurland and Ralph Lerner draw on the writings of a wide array of people engaged in the problem of making popular government safe, steady, and accountable. The documents included range from the early seventeenth century to the 1830s, from the reflections of philosophers to popular pamphlets, from public debates in ratifying conventions to the private correspondence of the leading political actors of the day. These rich and varied materials are arranged, first, according to broad themes or problems to which the Constitution of 1787 has made a significant and lasting contribution. Then they are arranged by article, section, and clause of the U.S. Constitution, from the Preamble through Article Seven and continuing through the first twelve Amendments.
Quill Project & Consource
The Quill Project and Consource provide open-access digital publications and educational materials related to the drafting of the Federal Constitution (1787), the Bill of Rights (1789), and the Reconstruction Amendments (1864-70).
Secondary Sources
Finding Scholarly Sources
HOLLIS should be your starting point for finding secondary sources. It will find both books and articles on your subject.
More specialized subject databases can help you find literature across disciplines.
- HOLLIS Library CatalogHOLLIS is Harvard Library's catalog. Search HOLLIS for books, articles, media and more.
- Law Journal Library (HeinOnline)Access via HarvardKey.
Full-text, page image access to law reviews and journals. Coverage begins with a journal’s first volume but does not usually include its most recent issues. Use the HeinOnline ScholarCheck citator to locate bar journals and law reviews that cite an article. - JSTORAccess via HarvardKey.
Full-text, page image access to more than 200 academic journals covering a very wide range of disciplines. JSTOR allows browsing by issue and full-text searching by discipline, by individual titles, or of the entire collection. Coverage of a journal begins with its first volume. However, current volumes may not be available. - America: History and Life with Full Text (ABC-Clio)Access via HarvardKey.
Index to articles on the history of the United States and Canada from over 2,000 journals published worldwide. - Dissertations and Theses Full Text (ProQuest)Dissertations and Theses Full Text indexes dissertations and masters' theses from most North American graduate schools as well as some European universities. Provides full text for most indexed dissertations from 1990-present.
Historical Treatises
- Making of Modern Law Legal Treatises, 1800-1926Access via HarvardKey.
Full-text, page image collection of 19th and early-20th-century legal treatises on British Commonwealth and American law. The collection covers a wide range of analytical, theoretical, and practical literature, and includes casebooks, local practice manuals, books on legal form, works for lay readers, pamphlets, letters, and speeches. - Legal Classics (HeinOnline)Access via HarvardKey.
Full-text, page image collection of many of the most highly regarded works written on the law. The Legal Classics collection is based on titles listed in the Bibliography of Early American Law by Morris L. Cohen. Additional titles have been selected from early British and Commonwealth works as well as from the AALS Law Books Recommended for Libraries. - LLMC DigitalAccess via HarvardKey.
Digital collection of both historical and current legal literature and government documents. LLMC Digital includes collections for U.S. federal, state and territorial materials, as well as foreign and international materials.
Primary & Archival Sources
Finding Primary Sources in HOLLIS
Primary sources available at Harvard include both published source material and archival materials. A few large historical document collections are listed below, but there are many more in HOLLIS.
HOLLIS Advanced Search Strategies:
Use both Author and Subject searches to find the papers of an individual.
Limit by Resource Type such as Archives/Manuscripts
Add the term sources to a subject word search.
Examples:
United States--Politics and Government--1789-1797--Sources
Constitutional History--United States--Sources
Newspapers & News Collections
- America's Historical NewspapersAccess via HarvardKey.
America’s Historical Newspapers, a component of the Archive of Americana, is a digital collection of historical newspapers including Early American Newspapers, 1690-1922; African American Newspapers, 1827-1998; and Hispanic American Newspapers, 1808-1980 - Chronicling America: Historic American NewspapersChronicling America: Historic American Newspapers allows you to search and read newspaper pages from 1777-1963 and find information about American newspapers published between 1690 and the present. Chronicling America is sponsored jointly by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Library of Congress as part of the National Digital Newspaper Program.
- Gale NewsvaultAccess via HarvardKey.
Gale NewsVault provides a single interface for searching across the various Gale digital newspaper archives, including: 17th and 18th Century Burney Collection Newspapers; 19th Century British Library Newspapers: Part 1; 19th Century U.S. Newspapers; 19th Century UK Periodicals Online; Times Digital Archive; and Times Literary Supplement Historical Archive. - Historical Newspapers (ProQuest)Access via HarvardKey.
ProQuest Historical Newspapers is a newspaper digital archive offering full-text and full-image articles for significant newspapers dating back to the 18th century. Every issue of each title includes the complete paper, cover-to-cover, with full-page and article images in easily downloadable PDF format. The full collection of ProQuest Historical Newspapers contains over 30 million digitized pages. Tittles include including the Atlanta Constitution, Atlanta Daily World, Baltimore African-American, Boston Globe, Chicago Defender, Chicago Tribune, Cleveland Call and Post, Detroit Free Press, Los Angeles Sentinel, Los Angeles Times, New York Amsterdam News, New York Times, New York Tribune, Norfolk Journal and Guide, Philadelphia Tribune, Pittsburgh Courier, San Francisco Chronicle, Wall Street Journal and Washington Post.
Founding Era Document Collections
- A Century of Lawmaking for a New Nation: U.S. Congressional Documents & Debates 1774-1875Primary source materials relating to relating to the history and culture of the United States on a broad range of topics. Includes the Continental Congress , the Constitutional Convention, 1774-1789, and U.S. Congressional Documents and Debates, 1774-1875.
Researching Constitutional Amendments
- The Complete Bill of Rights: The Drafts, Debates, Sources, and Origins2d edition, incorporates pertinent materials from the debate on the ratification of the Bill of Rights. Online via Oxford University Press
- The Bill of Rights: A Documentary History (Hein Online)A history of the federal Bill of Rights in documentary form. Contents include 1) the English antecedents to the Bill of Rights; 2) the Colonial period; 3) The Revolutionary Declarations and Constitutions; 4) developments under the Articles of Confederation; 5) the federal Constitution; 6) the state ratifying conventions; 7) the legislative history of the federal Bill of Rights, and 8) the ratification by the states.
- The Amendments ProjectExplore thousands of proposed amendments to the U.S. Constitution.
Other Historical Document Collections
- America's Historical Imprints (Archive of Americana)Access via HarvardKey.
Monographs, pamphlets, broadsides, government documents and ephemera related to American history. Includes American Broadsides & Ephemera, American Pamphlets, Early American Imprints and Afro-Americana Imprints. - Archive of AmericanaAccess via HarvardKey.
Books, pamphlets, broadsides, newspapers, government publications and ephemera including American Pamphlets; American Broadsides and Ephemera, Early American Imprints; America’s Historical Newspapers; American State Papers; U.S. Congressional Serial Set; House and Senate Journals; and Senate Executive Journals. - Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO)Access via HarvardKey.
Full-text searchable corpus of books, pamphlets & broadsides printed during the 18th Century in such fields as history and geography, fine arts, social sciences, medicine, science and technology, literature and language and religion and philosophy. - LLMC DigitalAccess via HarvardKey.
Digital collection of both historical and current legal literature and government documents. LLMC Digital includes collections for U.S. federal, state and territorial materials, as well as foreign and international materials.
- Worlds of ChangeA collection of more than 700,000 digitized pages of all known archival and manuscript materials in the Harvard Library that relate to 17th- and 18th-century North America.
HOLLIS for Archival Discovery
How can you locate specific documents within an archival collection?
Most manuscript and archival collections have a finding aid that provides detailed information about the collection.
Use HOLLIS for Archival Discovery to locate finding aids which describe the contents of faculty papers and other manuscript collections at Harvard.
- HOLLIS for Archival Discovery LibGuideInformation on the structure and functionality of Harvard Library's platform for searching special collections and archival materials, as well as search tips.
Planning your archival visit
If you are planning a visit to an archive or special collection, make sure to contact them directly before visiting. Many items are stored off site or need special arrangements for use, so give as much lead time as possible.
- A Survival Guide for Archival ResearchTips for archival researchers from Barbara Heck, Elizabeth Preston, and Bill Svec, "A Survival Guide for Archival Researchers" from the December 2004 issue of Perspectives on History: The Newsmagazine of the American Historical Society
Visiting Historical & Special Collections at HLSL
To schedule a research visit in the Root Room, create a HOLLIS Special Request account which will allow you to place requests to view HSC's material from within HOLLIS.
Next, fill out an appointment request form at least 1 business day in advance and tell us when you would like to visit.
Note that two days advance notice are required for visual materials and modern manuscripts (e.g. faculty papers) as they are stored offsite.
- HSC Appointment RequestRequest an appointment with Harvard Law School Library's Historical & Special Collections
- Harvard Law School Historical & Special CollectionsStart your research into HLS History with the resources compiled by Harvard Law School's Historical & Special Collections
Other Archives and Manuscript Collections
Archives & Special Collections at Harvard
- Harvard Library Locations & HoursFilter location by Features>Special collections and archives
- Harvard Guide to Manuscripts and ArchivesUse this detailed guide to locate archives and manuscript collections both within and outside of Harvard.
Finding Archives & Special Collections Outside of Harvard
- ArchiveGrid: Open the Door to HistoryArchiveGrid is a collection of nearly two million archival material descriptions, including MARC records from WorldCat and finding aids harvested from the web. ArchiveGrid data is primarily focused on archival material descriptions for institutions in the United States.
- Archive FinderArchive Finder is a current directory which describes over 220,000 collections of primary source material housed in thousands of repositories across the United States, the United Kingdom and Ireland.
Research Tools
Be Organized & Efficient
These research tools can help you organize your citations and sources, create permanent links to online materials and connect to Harvard's subscription databases & digital content.
Zotero
Zotero, a free citation manager, can help you organize your search results and create bibliographies and citations while you write. Download link and instructions are available via the Harvard guide.
Find Harvard's Subscription Resources
Use these tools to easily link from online to Harvard's databases, subscriptions and other digital content.
Perma.cc
Perma.cc allows you to create prevent link rot by saving cited websites to free web content. HLS faculty, staff and students can contact research@law.harvard.edu to become sponsored users.
Tropy
Use Tropy to organize photos of archival documents.
Getting Help
Contact Us!
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Email: research@law.harvard.edu
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