The Arthur W. Diamond Law Library is the law library of Columbia Law School. Located in Jerome L. Greene Hall on the university's

Morningside Heights Morningside Heights is a neighborhood on the West Side of Upper Manhattan in New York City. It is bounded by Morningside Drive to the east, 125th Street to the north, 110th Street to the south, and Riverside Drive to the west. Morningside ...

campus, it holds over 1.3 million volumes, and , it is the second largest academic law library in the United States. It was named for alumnus Arthur W. Diamond following a $7 million donation from the Miriam and Arthur W. Diamond Charitable Trust to Columbia Law School.

History

Columbia Law School was established in 1858, and by 1876 its library held over 4,000 volumes. In 1898, the library consisted of 25,000 volumes, and was described as "one of the most complete in the country." Its collections grew to 95,581 volumes by 1921, when the library began an effort to rapidly expand in preparation for Columbia Law School's centennial. The Columbia University Law Library Association was formed, with the goal of encouraging donations, creating a student loan collection for students unable to purchase their own books, and protecting the library's existing collections. Notable acquisitions throughout the library's history include the von Richthofen library, which consisted of 4,250 volumes on local laws in medieval Germany and was purchased in 1929; and the 1951 donation of some 1,100 volumes on copyright from Edwin P. Kilroe, assistant district attorney of New York County and legal counsel at the Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corporation. In 1982, the family of Japanese Supreme Court Justice Jiro Tanaka donated over 13,000 items to the library, which formed the core of the Toshiba Library for Japanese Legal Research, one of the most comprehensive collections of Japanese law outside of Japan, and the largest in the United States. It holds the private papers of Tanaka as well as Justice Itsuo Sonobe. Other rare items in the possession of the library include a 1482 copy of the '' Corpus Juris Civilis'', one of 15 printed drafts of the Constitution of India, and 22

incunabula In the history of printing, an incunable or incunabulum (plural incunables or incunabula, respectively), is a book, pamphlet, or broadside that was printed in the earliest stages of printing in Europe, up to the year 1500. Incunabula were pro ...

(including three copies of Nicholas Statham's ''Abridgment'', as well as volumes from the private collections of Richard Harison, John Jay,

Samuel Johnson Samuel Johnson (18 September 1709 – 13 December 1784), often called Dr Johnson, was an English writer who made lasting contributions as a poet, playwright, essayist, moralist, critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer. The ''Oxford ...

James Kent James Kent may refer to: *James Kent (jurist) (1763–1847), American jurist and legal scholar * James Kent (composer) (1700–1776), English composer *James Kent, better known as Perturbator, French electronic/synthwave musician *James Tyler Kent ...

, and

Melvin Krulewitch Melvin Levin Krulewitch (11 November 1895 – 25 May 1978) was a major general of the United States Marine Corps Reserve who saw active service in both world wars and the Korean War. Early years Melvin Krulewitch was born on 11 November 1895 ...

References

{{coord, 40.8071, -73.9603, type:landmark_region:US-NY, display=title Law libraries in the United States Libraries in Manhattan University and college academic libraries in the United States Columbia University Libraries

History

See also

References