Hugh and Hazel Darling Law Library

Hugh and Hazel Darling Law Library is the primary legal research library at the University of California, Los Angeles, serving the UCLA School of Law community and external scholars. The library supports instruction, scholarship, and clinical programs associated with the law school and maintains specialized collections for comparative law, international law, and regional legal history.

History

The library opened in 2009 following philanthropic support from benefactors linked to the University of California and legal philanthropy networks such as the Carnegie Corporation, the Ford Foundation, and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, while its development engaged architectural firms with prior projects for institutions like Harvard Law School, Yale Law School, Stanford Law School, Columbia Law School. Its founding coincided with curricular expansions at the UCLA School of Law that echoed reforms at University of California, Berkeley School of Law, New York University School of Law, University of Chicago Law School, and responses to legal trends reflected in materials from the American Bar Association, Association of American Law Schools, Legal Services Corporation, and the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia. Over time the library has hosted symposia and exhibits connected to figures and events such as Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Thurgood Marshall, Brown v. Board of Education, Marbury v. Madison, and controversies involving Watergate, Iran–Contra affair, and Citizens United v. FEC.

Architecture and Facilities

The building was designed to integrate influences from civic work by architects associated with projects for Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Walt Disney Concert Hall, Getty Center, and campus planning practices used at University of California, Berkeley, University of Michigan Law School, and University of Virginia School of Law. The facility features reading rooms, seminar spaces, and digital labs comparable to those at Library of Congress, British Library, and Bodleian Library; specialized secure stacks support rare materials akin to holdings at Huntington Library and The Bancroft Library. Public areas accommodate exhibits on legal history that have paralleled displays about Nuremberg Trials, The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Magna Carta, and archival presentations concerning Mexican–American War and Civil Rights Movement personalities. Technology infrastructure supports partnerships with vendors and consortia such as Westlaw, LexisNexis, HeinOnline, and cooperative initiatives like HathiTrust and California Digital Library.

Collections and Resources

The library's collections emphasize American law, international law, comparative law, and archives related to regional jurisprudence; significant print and digital holdings include federal reporters, state reporters, legislative histories, and treaties comparable to materials cited in United States Reports, Federal Reporter, United States Statutes at Large, and treaty collections such as the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. Special collections house manuscripts and papers that complement archives linked to scholars like Herbert Wechsler, Lon L. Fuller, Karl Llewellyn, and institutions including American Law Institute and National Archives and Records Administration. The international holdings encompass materials on International Court of Justice, International Criminal Court, European Court of Human Rights, and comparative resources on legal systems such as Common law, Civil law, Sharia, and legal reforms studied in contexts like European Union and United Nations. Electronic subscriptions provide access to databases and serials produced by publishers and organizations such as Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press, Springer, American Bar Association Journal, and specialized repositories including ProQuest, JSTOR, SSRN, and WorldCat.

Services and Research Support

Reference and research services include subject-specialist librarians who collaborate with faculty from programs like the UCLA School of Law clinics, centers such as the UCLA School of Law Civil Rights Clinic, the UCLA Center for Law and Global Affairs, and institutes modeled on centers at Harvard Kennedy School or Stanford Center for Legal Informatics. The library provides instructional programs for doctrinal and clinical courses, workshops on legal research comparable to curricula at Cornell Law School and Georgetown University Law Center, and support for faculty scholarship analogous to research services at Princeton University Library and Yale University Library. Services extend to interlibrary loan and document delivery through networks such as OCLC, cooperative digitization with Internet Archive, and preservation partnerships similar to those formed by National Endowment for the Humanities grant recipients.

Administration and Affiliations

Administratively the library reports within the organizational structure of the UCLA School of Law and coordinates with University of California system units including University of California Office of the President and the California Digital Library. Leadership has engaged professional associations such as the American Association of Law Libraries, Association of College and Research Libraries, and participates in accreditation dialogues involving the American Bar Association and the Association of American Law Schools. Collaborative affiliations include consortia and partnerships with regional and national institutions like Los Angeles Public Library, California State Library, Library of Congress, and academic libraries at University of Southern California, California Institute of Technology, and Pomona College.

Category:Academic libraries in California