Courtesy Lillian Goldman Law Library
One of the cutest shows — and certainly the most moo-velous in all New Haven — is in the most unlikely of places: The Lillian Goldman Law Library at Yale’s law school at 127 Wall St.
There, in that quiet subterranean sanctum of law tomes, inside two vitrines of rare items dating from 1529 to 2015, you can almost make out the echoing moos, yawps, grrs, and whatever noises fish, deer, and other voice-box challenged creatures make, as they emerge in the exhibition “Woof, Moo & Grr: A Carnival of Animals in Law Books.”
With the assistance of Michael Widener, the school’s rare book librarian, curator Mark Weiner has assembled 20 books hailing from around the world and centuries that contain animal illustrations. The exhibit runs through May 31.
This is all serious legal literature — the criminal codes of Venice, for example, in an edition dating from 1729; or Ahaveser Fritch’s Corpus Juris Venatorio-Forestalis compendium of laws related to poaching of deer.
But Weiner’s labels give literal voice, and an imagined name, to the creatures in the illustrations.
“My name is Bruno, and that deer was destroying my owner’s crops,” one reads. “If you live in Connecticut, you know exactly what I’m barking about! But in seventeenth-century Europe, hunting was a privilege reserved for the nobility, and by law we were poaching. Back then, there were many new laws that made the things we used to do all the time illegal. Some nobles even thought I should be forced to wear a stick around my throat, so that I’d make noise whenever I ran — what an indignity!”
Allan Appel Photo
Widener, who was a journalist in Texas before becoming a rare law book curator.
Even more fun, Weiner has grouped the books not chronologically but by creature type. We begin with Predators, which section contains Wolf V. Pig, Superior Court of Appeals, no. 93-Ani‑I, January 1,1999, a volume by legal publishing giant West Publishing to teach students how to do legal research, said Widener.
In the second section, Gentle Creatures, the curators give us a local Connecticut story: “Abby Smith and her cows, with a report of the law case decided contrary to law,” from 1872. In the story, a courageous woman refuses to pay taxes unless given the right to vote. She isn’t, so the authorities take away her cows for taxes, and she decides to carry on the suffragist fight by publishing her story for the world to read.
The label tells this story from the point of view of the cow: “I feel comforted when my owner Abby strokes my back, just like she’s doing in this engraving. My name is Daisy, and those are my friends Whitney, Minnie, and Proxy, along with the calves Martha Washington and Abigail Adams. It’s good to be a free-range dairy cow in Connecticut! In 1873, Abby launched a courageous protest in Glastonbury by declaring that she wouldn’t pay taxes until she was given the right to vote. In response, the town took me and my friends away – but good Abby bought us back. You might say that this is a book about us, and we think that’s moo-velous! You can still visit our home — it’s only about an hour away.”
The little exhibition then dives into Swimmers — tomes that codify the laws of the sea, and are introduced by images of sea horse and Poseidon, and even the tale of pikes, which appear in the volumes.
Widener said this was one of his favorites in the show because the fish are anthropomorphic, but also carefully calibrated: According to the law, you were supposed to take your fish and measure it, as anglers still do now, to determine if it was legal to keep or the creature must be tossed back in the deep.
Then there’s the final section, Who Let the Dogs Out. That’s where Bruno discuses laws against poaching in the late 17th century. “Law is a serious business, which is why it’s important to find a chance to laugh,” Weiner says in the introduction.
But the show also lets you see “the relationship between law and the visual over time,” Widener added. And that’s serious business.
The earliest works use images for allegory — describing what the qualities of justice are and what makes a good judge, for example. In the 17th and 18th centuries — great eras for irony — the animal imagery is strong on satire. In modern times animals and illustrations in general are very important in technical cases involving patents, among other matters, and as a kind of amusing visual counterpoint to lighten and elucidate the text-heavy ocean in which law students and lawyers must swim.
These 20 books are from a collection of illustrated law books in the nearby rare book room, which, says Widener, is likely the largest such collection in the country. Some of them will be in a larger exhibition that he and Weiner are planning for the Grolier Club in New York City in the fall.
In the meantime, if you’re looking for a way to interest your 4‑year-old in trying to get into Yale Law School, this moo-velous exhibition is definitely for you.