The nucleus of the Trials Collection contains the library of 19th century practitioner Nathaniel Moak, whose extensive documentation of every trial he conducted generated a unique social and legal record of 19th century trial practice.
Perhaps the most famous trial included is the Fall River Tragedy (1893), one of only approximately ten existing original copies of the Lizzie Borden case. The book is extremely hard to find because Lizzie herself bought all the copies she could and destroyed them.
The collection also includes a 43 volume set of trial pamphlets, which was donated to Cornell Law Library in 1927 by Benno Loewy. Each volume of pamphlets consists of several so-called "penny dreadfuls," which were cheaply produced and sold to a public eager to read about the sensational trials of the day.
There are also many monographs on historically important trials in the collection including Aaron Burr's treason trial, Andrew Johnson's impeachment trial, the trials of the Lincoln conspirators, and the Julius and Ethel Rosenberg treason trial.
Researchers are encouraged to make use of this collection. A portion of this collection is available via HeinOnline (under "World Trials"), and a subset of this online collection will soon be freely available here.