About the Ames Foundation

The Ames Foundation was founded in 1910 by contributions of the friends of the late Dean James Barr Ames “for the purpose of continuing the advancement of legal knowledge and aiding the improvement of the law.” The Foundation was incorporated in 1912. The trustees, a majority of whom must be active members of the faculty of the Harvard Law School, decided to devote the efforts of the Foundation to legal history, and the Foundation has proceeded with that charge ever since. The members of the corporation constitute, together with the officers and trustees, the Foundation’s board of directors. The Foundation is a section 501(c)(3) organization. As of this writing, it qualifies as an ‘operating foundation’ for tax purposes.

Since its inception the Foundation has made some research grants and has supported a number of publications in legal history. Its principal effort, however, has been its own publications program. These publications appear in various series, described below:

The Regular Series. Prior to the year 2000, most of the Foundation’s publications appeared in a numbered series entitled ‘Publications of the Ames Foundation’. The Year Books Series is a subseries of the regular series, and carries its own numbers in addition to those of the regular series. All volumes in the regular series are hard-bound, with a uniform style of cover. For example, 1998 saw the publication of the eleventh volume in the series of Publications of the Ames Foundation, an edition of the thirteenth-century treatise Lex mercatoria, with an elaborate introduction and commentary. 1996 saw the publication of the tenth volume in the series, the seventh volume in Year Books series: Year Books of Richard II: 6 Richard II, 1382–1383.

One volume is published in paper is outside of the regular series and not numbered. In 2011, the Foundation published, in conjunction with the Southampton Record Series, The Common and Piepowder Courts of Southampton, 1426–1483. As is explained on the home page, this volume is not available online, but paper copies may be obtained from the Foundation. See the order page.

Except for the Southampton volume, all Ames volumes that have been been published in paper may be obtained from William S. Hein & Co., Inc. They also may be viewed in HeinOnline by subscription.

The Year Books Series. The Year Books are the most important source for the history of English law from the late thirteenth century to the beginning of the sixteenth. Written in the curious dialect of Norman French known as ‘law French,’ they give, in dialogue form, the arguments of counsel and the questions asked by the judges in the most important cases that were pleaded before the central royal courts in this formative period of English law. Most of the Year Books were printed in the sixteenth century, but the Year Books of the reign of Richard II (1377–1399) were, for some reason, never printed, though a number of them survive in manuscript. Modern editions of the Year Books, including those of the Foundation, print a carefully edited French text, accompanied by the Latin text of the record of the case, where it has been found, and an English translation of both the French and Latin on the facing page. A scholarly introduction, tables, and comprehensive indices round out the volumes and make them of permanent value not only for students of legal history but also for students of social, political, and economic history.

Digital Publications. Since the year 2000, the Foundation has been actively engaged in pursuing a program of digital publications in legal history. These are all listed on the home page. Particularly notable are an online edition of Bracton and David Seipp’s massive index of the printed Year Books. More recently, the Foundation has had digitized a large collection of Harvard Law School Library’s rare books and manuscripts. Particularly notable in this regard is the digitization of the Harvard Law School Library’s large collection of manuscript notebooks from the Litchfield Law School (1784–1833), the Foundation’s first venture into American legal history. It has also participated in the digitization of 57 medieval manuscript English statute books and registers of writs and has prepared a preliminary catalogue of these manuscripts.

A more ambitious recent digital project is the conversion to database form and transfer to the Ames web server of Kenneth Pennington’s Bio-Bibliographical Guide to Medieval Canonists. This has now been renamed  Bio-Bibliographical Guide to Medieval and Early Modern Jurists (MEMJ). Pennington’s comprehensive list of canonists from 1100–1500 is gradually being expanded to include canonists of the sixteenth century and civilians from 1100–1700.

The ‘eseries’. Related to, but separate from, the program of digital publications described above, is the Foundation’s eseries. The series was announced with the publication of the first two volumes in the series in 2014. Another volume in this series is in advanced stages of production: The Register of the Official of the Bishop of Ely: 21 March 1374 – 28 February 1382, edited by Marcia Stentz and Charles Donahue, Jr. The page proofs of this volume are already available online. Volumes in the eseries are normally available online in PDF form. (Appeals to the Privy Council is available online as a website rather than in PDF form.) All the volumes in the eseries are also available, or will be available, in hard-bond paper copies.

Ames Foundation Officers, Trustees, and Directors