New exhibit: "Built by Association: Books Once Owned by Notable Judges and Lawyers, from Bryan A. Garner's Collection
“Association copies,” books once owned by their authors or other well-known individuals, have long been sought after by collectors. An outstanding private collection of books associated with famous judges and lawyers is now on display at the Lillian Goldman Law Library.
“Built by Association: Books Once Owned by Notable Judges and Lawyers,” features books from the collection of Bryan A. Garner, the world’s leading legal lexicographer. They include books inscribed by John Jay, the first chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, and Clarence Darrow, the most famous trial lawyer in American history. Other notable figures include Supreme Court Justices Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. and Benjamin Cardozo, and Lindley Murray, a lawyer best known as “the father of English grammar.” Three of the authors taught at Yale Law School: Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, Judge Jerome Frank, and the iconoclastic Professor Fred Rodell.
Bryan A. Garner has been editor in chief of Black’s Law Dictionary since 1996. He has authored many other standard reference works in legal lexicography and legal writing, including Garner’s Dictionary of Legal Usage (3rd ed. 2011), The Elements of Legal Style (2nd ed. 2002), and The Redbook: A Manual on Legal Style (3rd ed. 2013). He is the co-author with U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia of Making Your Case: The Art of Persuading Judges (2008) and Reading Law: The Interpretation of Legal Texts (2012). Garner is also the author of Garner’s Modern American Usage (3rd ed. 2009), published by Oxford University Press. Garner is the owner of LawProse, which conducts seminars in legal writing around the world. He is also Distinguished Research Professor of Law at Southern Methodist University. His personal book collection has over 35,000 volumes.
Garner curated the exhibit, with assistance from Mike Widener, Rare Book Librarian.
The exhibit is open to the public, 9am-10pm daily, September 23 - December 18, 2013 in the Lillian Goldman Law Library, Yale Law School.
– MIKE WIDENER, Rare Book Librarian
