Rare Books Lectures
The Melbourne Law School Rare Books and Legal History Lecture Series was launched in 2002 to promote and encourage research into the Rare Book Collection.
The lecture series also aims to use the collection as a starting point for more general discussions of subjects such as:
- Legal, business and economic history
- Early history and development of the Law School
- Publishing and book selling in Australia.
Previous Lectures in the Series
| Speaker | Lecture title | Date | Access |
|---|---|---|---|
| Katy Barnett | The Weird and Wonderful World of Animals and the Law | Tuesday, 19 September, 2023 6PM - 7PM | Details and booking |
| Dr Andrew Godwin | William Ah Ket - His Cases and Career | 2 March 2022 | Watch the video recording (62 min) Read the Lecture (PDF, 210K) |
| Austin Lovegrove | Writing About Enlightenment and Criminal Justice: The Macquarie Story as a History Tale for Today | 12 September 2019 | Read the Lecture, (PDF, 249K) |
| Ann Genovese | Vulnerable Law Sources, and How to Take Care of Them | 25 October 2018 | Watch the video recording (58 min) |
| Michael Widener | Picturing the Law | 18 May 2017 | Watch the video recording (61 min) |
| Professor Mark Lunney | A very Australian Story: Political Libels and the Conscription Referendums of the First World War | 21 July 2016 | |
| Dr Julie Evans | Attending to Place in the Academic life: Telling the Story of the 1881 Coranderrk Enquiry | 23 July 2015 | |
| Dr John Waugh | The Hanged and the Saved: Death and Mercy in Colonial Victoria | 24 July 2014 | Podcast link (MP3, 49 min) |
| Professor Travis McDade | The Book Theft Century: A Lament | 25 July 2013 | |
| Bryan A. Garner | The Utility and Pleasure of Collecting Antiquarian Lawbooks | 26 July 2012 | |
| Dr Shaunnagh Dorsett | Why archive? The New Zealand Lost Cases project | 27 October 2011 | |
| Professor Michael Bryan | The Modern History and Contemporary Issues of Law Reporting: from 1850 to the Online Revolution | 18 November 2010 | Article (PDF, 1.1 MB) |
| Professor Emeritus Wilfrid Prest | William Blackstone: Lawyer and Judge | 29 October 2009 | |
| Professor Michael Bryan | Early English Law Reporting | 12 November 2008 | Article (PDF, 200K) |
| Professor Emeritus Wilfrid Prest | Blackstone's Books | 15 November 2006 | |
| Professor John M Bennett | Judicial Biography: Does it Matter? The Making of 'Lives of the Australian Chief Justices' | 24 May 2005 | |
| Roger Stoddard | F.O.J. Smith and William Willis: Two Lawyer-Book Collectors in Nineteenth-Century Portland, Maine | 14 October 2004 | Read the pamphlet via the library catalogue |
| Michael Piggott | Preserving Legal History: The University of Melbourne's Law Archives | 11 May 2004 | |
| Dr John Emmerson QC | The First English Law Books | 12 November 2003 | |
| Professor Wallace Kirsop | Buying Law Books in Nineteenth Century Melbourne | 8 April 2003 | Read the pamphlet via the library catalogue |
| Professor Robin Sharwood | Revealing Hidden Treasures | 17 October 2002 |