How to Use Legal Documents as Primary Sources
Legal documents, such as statutory laws and court cases, provide historians with a rich primary source base upon which they can draw well documented information for the purposes of reconstructing the past. But legal decisions do not take place in a vacuum; placing legal documents in their historical context can shed light on the political mood of a particular time and place. This tutorial walks historians through the processes of reading and interpreting legal documents and extracting from them broader historical context.
Credits
Griffin, Kelsey