McKnight Antiquarian Book Collection

This collection consists of more than 7,000 volumes, and almost as many titles, of antiquarian and historical legal materials collected by Professor Joseph W. McKnight. Collection strengths include United States, British, and Continental treatises, and British, French, and Italian decisions. There also is a substantial emphasis on Continental customary law and lawyers’ published opinions (consilia). Most materials pre-date 1800, and a large proportion of those are in Latin.

The earliest printed item in the McKnight collection is a canon and civil law textbook, Niccolò de' Tudeschi’s Lectura Super V Libros Decretalium, printed in Basel by Johann Besicken in 1481.