Prior Editions of Treatises

Ever need to find an older version of a set like Corbin on Contracts, West's Federal Aministrative Practice or LaFave's Criminal Law? Researchers must sometimes use an older edition of a treatise to check a citation or understand the context of an issue at a particular time. Jenkins has a variety of resources, both in electronic and print formats, to aid you in your quest.  Several electronic databases offer prior versions of treatises.  Some do it only for fairly recent editions or releases; others provide access to much older titles which may be difficult to find elsewhere.  Jenkins also keeps prior editions of classic treatises in print and may be able to help if you are looking for a citation.

The LexisNexis Digital Library has prior versions of many Lexis titles.  Check-out, for example, volume 1 of Corbin on Contracts. Once the item has been borrowed, it can be viewed in your Account. Note that to the right of the Read option, there is a choice to select Prior Releases. For this volume, there are releases available to view going back to 2012.

In addition to prior releases, LexisNexis Digital sometimes has older years of titles.  For example, you may borrow either the 2015, 2016 or 2017 version of LexisNexis Practice Guide: Pennsylvania Civil Discovery by James Beasley.

West Academic Digital Library, which provides access to nutshells and hornbooks, also has prior editions of several titles, such as Arbitration Law in a Nutshell and LaFave's Criminal Law. Once you have pulled up the title of interest, look to see if there is an option for View previous edition.

HeinOnline has thousands of titles available in its Legal Classics collection. Among its many offerings, there are titles of historical significance, such as the first & second editions of Black's Law Dictionary.  Legal Classics also includes numerous editions and publishers' versions of  Commentaries on the Laws of England by Blackstone. Another highlight is Joseph Story's collection of writing on equity jurisprudence, the Constitution, and conflict of laws. Although much of Legal Classics consists of older classic material, there are editions of more recent titles, such as the 2010 and 2011-2012 editions of Criminal Law Deskbook, a resource for military justice practitioners.

LLMC Digital is another database that has older treatises.  Like HeinOnline, it has many different versions of Blackstone's Commentaries.  In fact, there is a whole collection devoted entirely to Blackstone, entitled the Yale Blackstone Collection (Search Collections>Special Focus Collections). LLMC also includes the United States Government Manual from 1940 - 2011 (Search Collections>U.S. Federal Government>General>U.S. Gov. Periodicals) and the classic 11th edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica (Search Collections>Special Focus Collections>Anglo-American Legal Reference>Anglo-Am. Leg. Ref., Miscellaneous).

Westlaw has a collection called Rise of American Law which provides access to older encyclopedias and treatises from 1820 to 1970. It contains the first editions of American Jurisprudence and Corpus Juris, as well as select older editions of treatises. West's Federal Administrative Practice, for example, used to be published as West's Federal Practice Manual and is available as part of this collection. Other popular titles include Bogert's Law of Trusts and Trustees (1st and 2nd ed.), Law of Municipal Corporations (2nd and Revised 2nd ed.) and Deller's Walker on Patents.  To find the collection, simply type 'Rise of American Law' in the main search bar on Westlaw.

Although Rise of American Law is not included as part of the library's public access Westlaw contract, librarians at Jenkins can access it for an additional fee.

Jenkins retains older editions of classic or important titles in print.  Search our catalog for items such as Williston's A Treatise on the Law of Contracts,  Couch on Insurance, Brady on Bank Checks, or Pennsylvania Suggested Standard Civil Jury Instructions to find prior editions.

Can't find what you are looking for? Ask us! If we don't have access to a title through our collection, we can try to obtain it through Interlibrary Loan.

Although more older editions are starting to become available electronically, most are not, and checking an older citation can still be a challenge.  Looseleafs in particular can be especially difficult. At the American Association of Law Libraries' Annual Meeting and Conference in Austin (2017), there was a vendor roundtable discussion for the Committee on Relations with Information Vendors (CRIV) ("CRIV Vendor Roundtable", The CRIV Sheet, Nov 2017, at 6 - 7).  Bloomberg BNA, Factset, Fastcase, LexisNexis, Practising Law Institute, Thomson Reuters, West Academic, William S. Hein & Co., and Wolters Kluwer participated. Preservation was discussed and out of this conversation CRIV plans to send a survey to vendors asking the following questions:

1. Do you, or do you plan to, make earlier editions available electronically?
2. What practices do you employ to preserve your own body of work, both digital and in print?

Hopefully vendors and librarians will be able to work together to ensure that material important to historical legal research will not be lost.