The archival collections of the Pritzker Legal Research Center pertain to both institutional and regional legal history. The bulk of our collection documents the social and cultural history of Northwestern Pritzker School of Law, dating back to its early days as the Union College of Law. We also house the Arthur Goldberg Papers, which chronicles Justice Goldberg's (JD '29, '30) time on the Supreme Court of the United States, and the Andy Austin Collection of more than 3,000 courtroom sketches. 

The Pritzker Legal Research Center’s collections of rare books and manuscripts consist of more than 8,000 volumes of published books and official documents relating to the history of the law and the legal profession, collected in large part by former dean John Henry Wigmore and alumnus Elbert H. Gary.  

The rare book collection is comprised of both manuscript and print books dating from ca. 1300 through the mid-nineteenth century. Its strengths include Roman, canon, and civil law in Western Europe throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.    

The manuscript holdings include record books, legal instruments, and decrees. Most, but not all, of these manuscripts belong to one of two collections, the Williams Collections and the Dean Hansell Collection. The Williams Collection, named after British collector E. Williams, Esq., is comprised of approximately 500 legal instruments of various purposes relating to the landed estate that were executed between 1300 and 1700 C.E. The Dean Hansell Collection is named in honor of alumnus and donor Dean Hansell ’77 and contains several hundred historical legal instruments. In recent years, the library has expanded its holdings of pre-Revolutionary French materials, complementing its significant collection of coutumiers. The library continues to explore potentially relevant acquisitions to build upon its rare book and manuscript collections.