In an essay about his 40-year project of writing a biography of
Benjamin Cardozo, Andrew Kaufman wrote of a research task he conducted in
print and then, years later, online:
"Working in the days before Lexis and Westlaw, there was one way to make a
substantial reconstruction of a practice that was heavily appellate. That
was to turn by hand the pages of the New York reports during the 23 years
in which Cardozo was a private practitioner. That took a very long time --
over a year, although I did not work on that project every minute of every
day. A subsequent check on Lexis, conducted much later, took 45 minutes."
Andrew L. Kaufman, Adventures of a Biographer: Professor Kaufman Recounts
His Forty-Year Pursuit of Cardozo, Harv. L. Bull., Summer 1998, at 4, 8.
It's good to be reminded of how much easier CALR makes some tasks
-- and it's also impressive to think that the biographer undertook the
task at all when thumbing through the reports was the only method
available!
The biography, by the way is:
Cardozo / Andrew L. Kaufman. Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University
Press, 1998. Phy Descript: xii, 731 p. : ill., ports. ; 25 cm. Notes:
Includes bibliographical references (p. 584-703) and indexes.
Mary Whisner, Head of Reference
Gallagher Law Library, University of Washington
whisner@u.washington.edu
Library's website: http://lib.law.washington.edu
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