Law Library of Congress
 |
|
| Country | United States |
|---|---|
| Type | National law library |
| Established | 1832 |
| Location | Washington, D.C. |
| Branch of | Library of Congress |
| Collection | |
| Size | 2.8 million |
| Access and use | |
| Access requirements | Public access; closed stacks |
| Circulation | Library does not publicly circulate |
| Population served | Members of the United States Congress and general public |
| Other information | |
| Budget | $15,797,000 |
| Director | Roberta I. Shaffer |
| Staff | 91 |
| Website | law.gov/ |
The Law Library of Congress is the law library of the United States Congress. The library contains the complete record of American law as well as materials from over 240 other global legal jurisdictions. Established in 1832, its collections are currently housed in the James Madison Memorial Building of the Library of Congress. With over 2.8 million volumes, it is the largest law library in the world.
From the Law Library of Congress website:
"The mission of the Law Library of Congress is to provide research and legal information to the U.S. Congress as well as to U.S. Federal Courts and Executive Agencies, and to offer reference services to the public ... To accomplish this mission, it has created the world's largest collection of law books and other legal resources from all countries, and now moves into the age of digitized information with online databases and guides to legal information worldwide."[1]
The Library of Congress was established as an in-house reference library for Congress in 1800, the year the government moved from Philadelphia to the new city of Washington, D.C. Law books made up nearly 20% of the initial collection. These were for the most part publications in English and International law.
The first Library of Congress was destroyed when the British burned the Capitol Building in 1814. It was replaced by the purchase of the library of Thomas Jefferson in 1815. This brought 475 law titles, 318 of which were published in England. It included Virginia laws and court decisions, but material from other states (which Jefferson had classified as "foreign law") remained limited. Although the Library received copies of all federal laws and Supreme Court decisions, obtaining state laws and decisions of state courts remained a problem for decades.
...
Wikipedia