French Legal Bibliographies

Abstract

For some time I have been aware of the need for law librarians, not merely in Louisiana (with its system of Civil Law and its special relationship to French Civil Law) but elsewhere as well to have access to the bibliographical works which guide us through the corpus of French law. At the American Association of Law Libraries Institute on the Civil Law in Montreal in 1977, I was extremely gratified to note the high level of interest in French law—even by librarians trained in Common Law! My experiences with the Institute, coupled with the reprinting in recent years of several of the most significant French legal bibliographies convinced me that greater exposure of these works is in order. Because of the introductory nature of this article, my tendency is to omit bibliographies which are virtually unobtainable. Also omitted are general bibliographies, even though law is included, and bibliographies which simply list materials. My obvious preferences are for those works which organize, systematize and classify legal works; those which describe or evaluate the works in question; and those which provide several points of entry by means of tables and indices.