History Vault
Law and Society since the Civil War: American Legal
Manuscripts from the Harvard Law School Library
his module consists of 11 collections from the Harvard Law School
Library. These are the papers of Felix Frankfurter, Louis D. Brandeis,
Albert Levitt, Livingston Hall, Richard H. Field, Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.,
Roscoe Pound, the Sacco-Vanzetti Case, Sheldon Glueck, William H. Hastie,
and Zechariah Chafee.
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The Papers of Felix Frankfurter and Louis D. Brandeis provide a behind-thescenes view of the Supreme Court between 1919 and 1961. The centerpiece
of the Frankfurter Papers is Frankfurter’s complete Supreme Court case files
of opinions and memoranda from the middle of the 1938 term through the
1961 term. A good example of the breadth, detail, and research potential of
the Frankfurter Papers can be found in the files for the segregation cases of
the early 1950s, especially the file for Brown v. Board of Education. Frankfurter’s
memoranda for the Court conferences form a virtual inside history of this
Supreme Court Justice
important decision. These documents discuss at length the constitutional
Felix Frankfurter
merits of the case and the role of the Supreme Court in enforcing a decree
with such massive political and social implications. Other topics covered in
the Frankfurter files include the Bill of Rights, capital punishment, church
and state issues, civil liberties, religion and public education, the commerce
clause, criminal justice and criminal law, freedom of speech, the Rosenberg
case, the Communist Party, the press and crime, and wiretapping. Frankfurter’s
papers also include correspondence with his fellow Supreme Court justices
and with many other important figures.
The Louis D. Brandeis Papers cover all the Supreme Court cases that
Brandeis worked on from 1919 to 1939. Brandeis’s files offer insight into
one of the most influential judicial minds of the twentieth century, the
development of his thought and rulings, and the inner workings of the
Supreme Court during Brandeis’s tenure on the court. Brandeis’s papers
include successive drafts and revisions of opinions, comments of other
justices on Brandeis’s opinions, materials written or collected by Brandeis’s
law clerks, and correspondence with other justices.
Supreme Court Justice
Louis D. Brandeis
The papers of Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. consist mainly of his correspondence,
spanning the years 1861 through 1935. Holmes was a prolific and brilliant
correspondent. His letters have long been acknowledged as an extraordinary record of a wide-ranging and imaginative intellect. Among Holmes’s
correspondents were Presidents Herbert Hoover, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and
William Howard Taft; Supreme Court Justices Brandeis, Cardozo, Frankfurter,
Hughes, and Stone; and, other judges and authors including Henry Adams,
Learned Hand, Henry and William James, and Roscoe Pound. Holmes’s
career spanned nearly 80 years, from the Civil War to the Great Depression.
His legal work helped guide the United States through the great changes of
the early twentieth century, and his papers are an invaluable record of this
important era.
Supreme Court Justice
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
Italian immigrant laborers and philosophical anarchists, Nicola Sacco and
Bartolomeo Vanzetti were accused of the 1920 murder of a paymaster and
his guard in South Braintree, Massachusetts. Few trials in American legal
history have occasioned more argument and passion than the case of Sacco
and Vanzetti. Their trial and subsequent appeals attracted worldwide attention
and protest. A Dedham, Massachusetts, court returned a guilty verdict on
July 14, 1921, and precipitated six years of judicial proceedings, postponements,
appeals, and sympathy demonstrations. The death sentence was carried out
by electrocution on August 22, 1927. The papers in this module provide an
in-depth look at the progress of this momentous case as well as the trial’s
legal, political, and social impact.
An expert in international jurisprudence, Albert Levitt’s Papers cover two
distinct periods of his life. The first group of papers dates from roughly 1927
Norfolk County Courthouse,
through
1937. These papers reflect the major concerns of an era when the
Dedham, MA, site of second
United States was rapidly consolidating its position as a principal world
Sacco and Vanzetti trial
power. The second major group of materials documents Levitt’s extensive
research on the Rhodesian independence crisis of the mid- and late 1960s.
Livingston Hall was involved in many state and local commissions, councils, surveys and study groups
charged with monitoring the judicial system of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and with drafting
legislation or presenting recommendations for criminal law reform. Hall worked on studies such as the
Massachusetts District Court Survey and the Governor’s Committee on Law Enforcement and the Administration
of Criminal Justice. He assisted in drafting the Massachusetts District Court reorganization bill of 1953
and the Massachusetts Criminal Code of 1972. Hall’s papers document each of these activities, and, in so
doing, provide a great deal of information on the legal reform efforts in the state of Massachusetts.
Richard H. Field was a recognized authority in the areas of civil procedure, federal jurisdiction, legal
ethics and evidence. Important parts of the Field Papers cover his role
in the defense of Alger Hiss, his work for the Office of Price
Administration (including drafts of speeches written for President
Truman), and his positions on national committees that were charged
with draft new rules and codes, such as the ABA’s Code of Professional
Responsibility, the Uniform Rules of Evidence of the National
Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws, and the U.S.
Supreme Court Advisory Committee’s Rules of Civil Procedure. A large
portion of Field’s papers document his involvement in the American
Law Institute’s 10-year study of federal-state jurisdiction.
As an innovative theorist, Roscoe Pound was a leader of the sociological
approach to the law; as an education and as dean of the Harvard Law
School, he was a champion in the struggle to raise the standards of the
American legal profession; and as a practicing attorney, he was a force
in the field of criminal law reform. The Roscoe Pound Papers in this
module cover Pound’s activities as a teacher, administrator, legal scholar,
and reformer of the criminal justice system. Of special interest are
Pound’s files on the National Commission on Law Observance and
Enforcement from 1929-1931. The papers also reproduce Pound’s
voluminous professional correspondence with U.S. Presidents,
Supreme Court justices, judges, and many prominent legal figures
from 1910 through the 1950s.
Roscoe Pound
Harvard Law School professor for over 40 years, Sheldon Glueck pioneered the study of criminal law in
the twentieth century. His papers relate to his teaching, research, and professional service in the areas of
juvenile delinquency, penology and penal reform, the criminal justice system, recidivism, the causes of
crime, probation and parole, women and crime, psychiatry and the law, and crime prevention.
William H. Hastie (left) served
as the Civilian Aide to the
Secretary of War Patterson
(right) from 1940-1943.
The William H. Hastie Papers illustrate the extraordinary career of America’s first
Black federal judge. Hastie was one of the pioneers of the judicial struggle to
end racial discrimination. His papers reveal the dual role that Hastie played in
the civil rights movement: first, as a lawyer, dean of the Howard Law School,
and a judge of the Third Circuit Court of Appeals; and, second, as a political
crusader who served on the board of directors of the NAACP Legal Defense and
Education Fund from 1941 to 1968. He was chairman of the 1965 White
Conference “To Fulfill These Rights.” Files on Hastie’s civil rights activities
contain material on important legal cases, civil rights and enforcement policies,
housing, crime, and many other issues. Of particular importance are Hastie’s
papers on his involvement in NAACP affairs, the Brown v. Board of Education
ruling and its aftermath and federal antilynching legislation. (Hastie also
served as the Civilian Aide to the Secretary of War from 1940-1943. Secretary
of War files pertaining to this portion of Hastie’s career are included in the
History Vault module entitled Black Freedom Struggle in the 20th Century:
Federal Government Records).
For almost half a century, Zechariah Chafee Jr. was widely recognized as the dean of civil liberties
scholarship in the United States. Through his writings, speeches, and correspondence with the most
respected jurists in the nation, Chafee influenced public opinion and legal reasoning in the areas of free
speech and civil rights. His papers, which span from 1898 to 1957, document the range of Chafee’s
professional activities. Among the cases treated in detail in his papers are those of Earl Browder, Harry
Bridges, the Hollywood Ten, Alger Hiss, and Eugene Debs. Chafee’s correspondence files include letters
from Supreme Court justices Louis Brandeis, Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., Hugo Black, Benjamin Cardozo,
William O. Douglas, and Felix Frankfurter.
The unique files in Law and Society since the
Civil War: American Legal Manuscripts from
the Harvard Law School Library offer another
perspective on several topics found in other
History Vault modules. The Felix Frankfurter
Papers, for example, offer a behind-the-scenes view of how Justice Frankfurter and the Supreme Court
approached Brown v. Board of Education, the landmark school desegregation case. The NAACP Papers in
History Vault cover the NAACP’s legal strategy, and NAACP correspondence about the case. The Black Freedom
Struggle Federal Government Records module includes documentation from the federal government’s perspective
with files from the Eisenhower Administration and files from the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights pertaining to
Brown and school desegregation.
For a free trial or more information, visit www.proquest.com/pdpq/historyvault
Collection List: Law and Society since the Civil War: American
Legal Manuscripts from the Harvard Law School Library
• Albert Levitt Papers
• Richard H. Field Papers
• Felix Frankfurter Papers
• Roscoe Pound Papers
• Part I: Supreme Court of the United States
Case Files of Opinions and Memoranda,
October Terms, 1938-1952
• Part II: Supreme Court of the United States
Case Files of Opinions and Memoranda,
October Terms, 1953-1961
• Part III: Correspondence and Related Material
• Part I: Correspondence, 1907-1964
• Part II: Writings, Lectures, Addresses,
Teaching Notes, and Miscellaneous
Manuscripts
• Part III: Personal, Biographical,
Bibliographical, Miscellany, and Activities
• Sacco-Vanzetti Case Papers
• Livingston Hall Papers
• Sheldon Glueck Papers
• Louis D. Brandeis Papers
• William H. Hastie Papers
• Part I: United States Supreme Court October
Terms, 1916-1931
• Part II: United States Supreme Court October
Terms, 1932-1939
• Part I: Judicial Activities
• Part II: Civil Rights, Organizational, and
Private Activities
• Zechariah Chafee Jr. Papers
• Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. Papers
Get the whole historical picture with complementary ProQuest resources
• ProQuest History Vault modules
• The Gerritsen Collection
• Historical Newspapers
• Black Newspapers
• Black Studies Center
• Parliamentary Papers
• Documents on British Policy Overseas
• The HistoryMakers
• Colonial State Papers
• Black Abolitionist Papers
• Digital National Security Archives
• American Periodicals Series Online
• Civil War Era
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