Resumen de Legal Information and the Development of American Law: Writings on the Form and Structure of the Published Law

Richard A. Danner

• Robert C. Berring�s writings about the impacts of electronic databases, the Internet, and other communications technologies on legal research and practice are an essential part of a larger literature that explores the ways in which the forms and structures of published legal information have influenced how American lawyers think about the law. Professor Danner reviews Berring�s writings, along with those of other writers concerned with these questions, focusing on the implications of Berring�s idea that in the late nineteenth century American legal publishers created a �conceptual universe of thinkable thoughts� through which U.S. lawyers came to view the law. He concludes that, spurred by Berring and others, the literature of legal information has become far-reaching in scope and interdisciplinary in approach, while the themes struck in Berring�s work continue to inform the scholarship of newer writers.