legal history•introduction • matthew dyson We might also wonder from where the money for legal research, particularly legal historical research, will come in the future. A simple reference to the name of the foundation generously supporting this volume is illuminating. The John M. Olin Foundation, set up in 1953 by an American chemical and munitions manufacturer seeks to further free market economics and, in effect, to dilute or limit the influence of professors and law schools in theUSwhich did not prioritize those views. Contrast that with the Olin Foundation for Legal History, founded in 1947 by Carin and Gustav Olin to further Swedish research in legal history. The Swedish foundation was without political aims, the only clear limit being that research had to be connected to Swedish legal history. It was also smaller and more personal, Gustav Olin having been a lawyer, and indeed, a lawyer born in Lund, who studied at the university from 1890 to 1899, and who worked at the Svea Court of Appeal (a court founded in 1614, and the subject of Mia Korpiola’s research, supported by the Foundation bearing his name and culminating in a book published in 2014). The American version deliberately closed down in 2005, within a generation of the death of its donor, to prevent drift from the donor’s intention (although John M. Olin professors still exist at four leadingUSlaw schools).We should hope the Swedish Olin Foundation continues to support quality research well into the future. Notice that both philanthropists chose to support what they had worked with and valued throughout their lives: in the American case, the free market and conservatism; in the Swedish case, scholarship, legal history, and intellectual pursuit of truth. 50
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