- Other Sources for Washington & Lee School of Law History
- This law school became associated with Washington & Lee University (then Washington College) soon after the Civil War. The administration of the law school was virtually indistinguishable
from that of the university as a whole well into the twentieth century. Most early records of the law school, therefore, are held in the Special Collections area of W&L's Leyburn Library, which houses the university archives. Among the holdings here is the typescript draft of Ollinger Crenshaw's 1968 history of W&L, General Lee's College. The draft of the chapter on the law school is more extensive than the published version and contains notes to sources.
- For sketches of the history of W&L law
school, of its faculty,
or of selected alumni,
see the law library
website.
- Other Sources of Information About Powell Family History and Genealogy
- Papers of assorted Powells, Gwathmeys, and Ruckers can be found at the Virginia Historical Society. Genealogists will want to consult the vital records held at the Library of Virginia. An ever increasing amount of the library's holdings is available on-line.
- Other Sources of Powell Photos
- The Powell Archives holds many photographs of Justice Powell and his family. Many more remain with family members. Almost certainly, however, the best selection of photos of Justice Powell is held by the Office of the Curator of the U.S. Supreme Court. Indeed, the office has
endeavored to collect the widest possible range of photos for all of the Supreme Court Justices. There is no publicly
accessible web site for the office at this time. It is located in the Supreme Court Building. The telephone number is (202)479-3298.
- Other Supreme Court and lower Federal Court primary sources
- Library of Congress Manuscripts Division
- LC has by far the largest holdings of Justices' papers. Several of Powell's contemporaries, including Justices Brennan, Douglas, Marshall, and White, have donated their papers here.
- National Archives and Records Administration
- Federal Court administrative records are here as are the audio recordings of Supreme Court oral arguments. Selected arguments can be heard on the
Supreme Court Oral Argument web site. Full text Supreme Court decisions can be found at several web locations including Cornell Law School's excellent site.
- The Federal Judicial Center's Federal Judicial History Office
- This is "the" source for locating federal court records and the papers of federal judges. No link to the History Office is apparent from this page. There are, however, several publications of the Federal Judicial History Office available in PDF format (you must have reader software such as Adobe Acrobat), including A Directory of Oral History Interviews Related to the Federal Courts, A Guide to the Preservation of Federal Judges' Papers, and its newsletter The Court Historian.
- Yale University Library Department of Archives and Manuscripts
- Yale University holds the papers of Powell Supreme Court contemporary Potter Stewart. So extensive are Yale's holdings of legal resources that a 1983 listing of relevant collections ran 83 pages.
- The College of William and Mary
- In 1996, the estate of former Chief Justice Warren E. Burger chose William & Mary's Swem Library as the repository for the Burger papers. They are closed to researchers until 2026.
- A List of Legal History Websites
- The Legal History and Rare Books Special Interest Section of the American Association of Law Libraries maintains this list. It is a good starting point for research in the history of American law.
- A Social Science Data Archive
- The Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) homepage includes Prof. Harold Spaeth's "United States Supreme Court Judicial Database, 1953-1995 Terms" (Study # 9422) in its "Criminal Justice Data" (NACJD) section. This database "emcompasses all aspects of United States Supreme Court decision-making from the beginning of the Warren Court in 1953 up to the completion of the 1995 term of the Rehnquist Court on July 1, 1996."
- Other law schools with archival programs
- In a survey for her seminal article on archives and manuscipts programs in law schools (85 Law Library Journal 429, Summer 1991), the University of Virginia School of Law's archivist, Marsha Trimble, identified 40 law schools that held archives or manuscript materials; 6 of them had archivists. From anecdotal knowledge of the Powell Archives staff, it is likely that the number of law schools holding these kinds of materials has grown since Marsha's article was written, with the number of law school archivists has remaining proportionally low. The listing below reresents the beginning of an attempt to identify law schools with archives and manuscript holdings that are reflected on the World Wide Web. Additions, updates and corrections are encouraged.
- University of Alabama
- The mission of The John C. Payne Special Collections of the Bounds Law Library is "to collect books and archival materials relating to the history of the School of Law, the school's alumni and faculty, the history of the bench and bar of Alabama, and other topics of legal history." Links to OPAC records for many of the 6000 printed volumes, and 1000 cubic feet of manuscript materials, several thousand photographs, and artifacts comprised by this collection can be found here. Of special note are the papers of former United States Senator Howell Heflin, and a replica of United States Supreme Court Justice Hugo L. Black's library.
- University of Cincinnati College of Law
- A brief description of the rare book and manuscript holdings can be found here.
- Dickinson School of Law
- In the librarian profiles, there is an entry for "Mark Podvia, Associate Law Librarian and Archivist. ...As Archivist, he supervises the collection of materials related to the School's history." There is no description of the nature or extent of the archival holdings.
- Georgetown University Law Center
- In addition to papers of many of its distinguished alumni, the Center is conducting an ambitious oral history project with its graduates.
- Harvard University Law School
- The most extensive law school special collections with a page worthy of its holdings. Included are finding aids to many significant manuscript collections, including the papers of Supreme Court Justices Brandeis, Cardozo and Frankfurter.
- University of Houston Law Library
- Finding aids to the papers of John R. Brown, late chief judge of the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals; the Judge John John R. Brown Maritime Law Collection; and the Frankel Rare Book Collection.
- University of Louisville Law Library
- Guides to the papers of Justices Louis D. Brandeis and John Marshall Harlan (1833-1911) are available here.
- University of Pennsylvania Law School Biddle Library
- Associate Director for Special Collections, Cynthia Arkin, oversees a collection that includes the American Law Institute Archives.
Records of the Institute since its inception in 1923 are found here. An online finding aid is available.
- South Texas College of Law, The Fred Parks Law Library Special Collections
- As stated on their web site, "Special Collections contains a wide range of unique and valuable monographs, manuscripts, photographs, periodicals, videotapes, and artifacts. These materials document the legal history and activities of lawyers in Europe, Great Britain, Mexico, the United States, and Texas. The library also documents the growth and traditions of The South Texas College of Law; the history of legal education; and various facets of our legal, political, and social heritage. In addition, many of these works remain useful in the contemporary study and practice of law."
-
- University of Texas School of Law Tarlton Law Library
- Justice Tom C. Clark's papers are amongst the rich and extensive special collections holdings of this library. The subpage " ... Guide to Leal History Resources on the Web" is very well done.
- University of Virginia School of Law
(This is a dynamic link to the law school library. Choose "Research Guides," and then "Special Collections.")
- Finding aids to manuscript collections include those of Supreme Court Justices Roger Brooke Taney and James Clark McReynolds.
- Selected printed sources
- Jeffries, John C. Jr., Justice Lewis F. Powell, Jr.: A Biography. New York, NY: Charles Scribner's Sons: 1994.
- An erudite yet highly accessible biography of Powell by one of his Supreme Court clerks, now an Associate Dean at the University of Virginia Law School.
- Wigdor, Alexandra K., The Personal Papers of Supreme Court Justices. New York, NY: Garland Publishing, Inc.; 1986.
- Though somewhat dated, this remains the authoritative source concerning the existence and location of the papers of the
Justices up to 1985.
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