American Law & History

Welcome! This page provides a variety of resources on American law and legal history, including (on the right sidebar) the essential primary sources of U.S. law: the Constitution, federal statute law in chronological series (published as the Statutes at Large), the U.S. Code (statute law codified by topic), the Code of Federal Regulations, (recent) Supreme Court decisions, etc., as well as citation and research guides to U.S. law. On the footer below are links to more general web resources on American law and history.

Most of the materials on this page are applicable to any period of American history (and some to legal history more broadly). This page is thus the open-access home page for students in both semesters of American Legal History (Legal Studies/History 261-262).

For materials specific to LS/History 261 (from the beginnings to the era of the Civil War), see Early American Legal History. For materials specific to LS/History 262 (from ca. 1860 to the present), see Modern American Legal History.

Students in in Law and Environment (Legal Studies/Environmental Studies 430) who research U.S. topics will also find on this page and the other two linked above vital sources and guides to U.S. law, but which are not limited just to environmental topics.