In 1962, the Journal of law and Contemporary Problems devoted its entire winter issue to aging. The remarkable thing about that issue was that it had only one article that dealt with legal questions—and that with tax treatment of the elderly. The remainder of the issue contained articles dealing with the demographic and sociological characteristics of the elderly, currently held views and theories of aging and human development, and some special concerns from other disciplines like geriatric psychiatry.
In less than a generation, old age and the law has evolved into a field of study of consuming interest to legal scholars, practitioners, sociologists, and consumers. The Chicago-Kent Law Library established a special catalog of the law and aging in 1983. By 1987 (the year in which the last entries were made for the collection), the catalog had grown to over 500 pages. Earlier (1982) the Southern Culifornia Law Review published a similar catalog which was updated in 1984 and 1987.