Erwin N. (Erwin Nathaniel) Griswold papers

The papers of Erwin Nathaniel Griswold (1904-1994) span the years 1925 to the 1994, with the bulk falling in the 1934 to 1967 period.

The collection includes correspondence (both letters received and carbons of letters sent); agenda; minutes of meetings; memoranda; reports; legal and legislative documents; clippings, reprints, and other printed items; drafts; manuscripts of published and unpublished writings including two travel journals; and a small amount of memorabilia such as honorary degree certificates. Photographs have been transferred to the Law Library's Art Collection.

Erwin Griswold's papers relate to the various aspects of his professional and public activities, with a relatively small group reflecting on his personal life. Perhaps the most interesting group of the papers are the five manuscript boxes of correspondence for the years 1934 to 1939 which is arranged alphabetically by correspondent. Correspondence is with law school colleagues on other law faculties, former students, jurists, government officials, law review editors, and personal friends. It is of a predominantly professional nature; however, there is a certain amount of discussion of the current controversies of that period, e.g., President Franklin D. Roosevelt's "Court-packing" plan. Later correspondence was kept by Griswold within special subject categories.

Another significant group (17 manuscript boxes) are the papers which Griswold accumulated while serving on the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights (1961-1967). This group includes correspondence between Commission members, memoranda, drafts of reports, fact sheets, statements, press clippings, agenda, minutes of meetings, and directories. It documents, almost day- by-day, Griswold's activities as a Commission member. Included are drafts and analyses of the various chapters of the two reports in which he participated, namely the " Race and Education Report " and the " Urban Report."

A third group which bulks large are the papers generated by Erwin Griswold as a tax expert and consultant on tax matters, both to government agencies and to private companies. Some of the private companies whom he advised were the Massachusetts Indemnity and Life Insurance Company, American Chicle Company, American Paper Writing Company, and International Hydro-Electric System. His public service as tax consultant included his work for the U.S. Treasury's Advisory Committee on Estate and Gift Taxation (1941-1946).

The SERIES: SPECIAL TRIPS and HAGUE CONFERENCE ON PRIVATE INTERNATIONAL LAW illustrate Griswold's increasing concern, beginning after World War II, with international legal problems and global concerns about war and peace. Griswold became quite an expert on Africa: In 1958 he was called upon to attend the "treason" trial of ninety-two South Africans as an observer, and in 1963 he visited Liberia as part of an educational strategy advisory group. There is also a folder containing a copy of 132 pages of his diary of and report on his visit to Russia in May 1961 to attend an American-Soviet Conference in the Crimea. The Hague Conference on Private and International Law took place 1964, 1965, and 1967. Griswold served as the United States expert. His papers of the Hague Conferences consist of working papers; background material; questionnaires; reports; draft conventions; correspondence, especially with Richard D. Kearney.

Although Dean Griswold was active in many professional organizations, the only ones represented in the Law School's contingent of papers are the American Bar Association's Committee on Professional Relations and the Practicing Law Institute. There is a certain amount of material on his public service other than the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, e.g. the (Massachusetts) Attorney General's Advisory Committee on Civil Rights and Civil Liberties; the Lawyer's Committee for Civil Rights Under Law; the U.S. Congress's Joint Committee on the Economic Report; the U.S. Department of Justice's Alien Enemy Hearing Board; and the U.S. Treasury Department. Nine folders contain items related to Griswold's assistantship in the Solicitor General's Office of the U.S. Department of Justice, 1930-1934.

Nine manuscript boxes contain drafts of some of Griswold's writings (excluding his case and textbooks); five of these are various drafts of his first book, SPENDTHRIFT TRUSTS (first edition, 1936). Two of the manuscript boxes hold reprints of a great number of his articles.

Finally, the papers contain miscellaneous Harvard Law School and personal items, e.g., letters of congratulations upon his appointment as Dean in 1946; papers relating to his opening of the Bodleian Law Library complex in 1964; programs of special Law School events which occurred during his Deanship; lecture notes; and a large amount of clippings, arranged in roughly chronological order and covering the years 1946 to 1974. Many of the clippings relate to Griswold's public criticism of Senator Joseph McCarthy and Griswold's stand on and writings about the Fifth Amendment issue.

The papers contain three over-size scrapbooks: two relate to his attendance at the South African "treason" trial in 1958, one relates to his stand on the School Prayer decision by the Supreme Court of the United States in 1963.