Seattle University Law Library

A hornbook is a treatise on the basic principles of a subject. There are hornbooks on a variety of legal subjects. The term is used generically for treatises but West Publishing (Thomson-Reuters) has a series actually named “Hornbook Series.” According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the hornbook is named for a children’s learning device from centuries ago consisting of a “leaf of paper containing the alphabet . . protected by a thin plate of translucent horn.”