About the Law Library: Special Collections

The volumes of this library were used to train many of our young nation's finest lawyers, legislators, and statesmen. Henry Clay was among the first faculty and was a strong force in helping to support and expand the library. The school eventually closed its doors in 1861. Several subsequent attempts to revive the law department proved unsuccessful.

In 1994, the Regent University Law Library had the good fortune to acquire the near-intact library from a bookseller who had obtained it from Transylvania University, where it had been in storage for some years. Careful research in the original catalog has revealed only a very few missing volumes two centuries later.

The Founders Collection totals 1,023 volumes and spans four centuries, from Fitzherbert’s La Grande Abridgement published in 1577, through early American imprints of Chitty, Story, and others during the first half of the 19th century. Approximately 60% of the collection is comprised of early American imprints consisting of treatises, reporters, and early state and federal materials such as legislative acts, reports, state papers, journals, and Congressional debates. The remainder of the collection consists of similar imprints from Great Britain, including many 18th-century treatises and compilations.

To learn more, read Foraging the Transylvania Law Library:  A Unique and Valuable Collection.

Credited with many accomplishments in diplomacy and political science, Dr. Ralph Johnson Bunche reached the pinnacle of his distinguished career as the recipient of the 1950 Nobel Peace Prize for his armistice negotiation between Israel and four separate Arab nations (Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria). He was also the first African American recipient of that prize. To learn more, see Ralph Bunche: Distinguished Scholar, International Statesman and Equal Rights Activist, published in the Regent Journal of International Law.

The Ralph Johnson Bunche Personal Library consists of over 400 items, books, journals, journal articles, newspapers, magazines, news clippings, and other miscellaneous documents and personal items dating from the 1930s until the 1960s.

These items comprised the personal library of Dr. Bunche at the time of his death. Regent University Law Library purchased this library at auction from a rare book dealer in 1999.

To inquire about conducting research in this collection or to make an appointment to use the Special Collections Room, contact the Law Library Director.

Richard Henry Dana, Jr. was a prominent 19th-century Boston attorney and author of the classic, Two Years Before the Mast. An alumnus of Harvard Law, class of 1837, Dana was a well-known abolitionist, defender of the rights of the common man, and maritime law attorney, authoring the principal treatise of his day on the rights of seamen. 

The Richard Henry Dana Jr. Collection contains 440 volumes, many of which were a part of the working law library of Richard Henry Dana, Jr.  These later became part of the working library of Boston attorney Gregory Mooradkanian, who had offices at 314 Main Street. 

Mr. Mooradkanian's complete library was donated to Regent University School of Law in 2012 by his children.

The Mary Elizabeth Menefee Collection of Law and Film was established in 2001 as a research collection in loving memory of Mary Elizabeth Menefee, daughter of Professor Samuel Pyeatt and Mary Waterman Menefee. The collection focus is on Law and Lawyers in the visual media. Though most titles are in contemporary format (DVD or VHS), the films themselves are from every era and genre of filmmaking and address law, lawyers, courts, and society’s view of the same.

This collection is restricted to academic or scholarly use.