Manuscripts and Finding Aids

• Finding Aids

Elizabeth N. Tompkins, Law 1923, first female law graduate at UVA John Edwin Roller, Law 1867 (click on images for larger view)

Manuscript Collection

The Special Collections department serves as a repository primarily for the law-related professional papers of our own faculty and alumni, but occasionally accepts collections from other sources if their subjects tie in with existing holdings. There are over 80 collections and single items, such as attorneys' record books.

Faculty donations from more than twenty professors or their families include the diaries of William Minor Lile; the Prince Edward County Free School Association papers of F.D.G. Ribble; Judge Hardy Cross Dillard's International Court of Justice files; Richard Bonnie's papers concerning the investigation of Soviet psychiatric abuse; and Frank McCulloch's papers on the International Labor Organization. Alumni whose papers are housed in Special Collections include railroad attorney Gordon Buck; Virginia lawyer and lieutenant governor Lewis Preston Collins; Charlottesville lawyer and judge R. T. W. Duke, Jr.; Justice James Clark McReynolds; Roy Morgan's files on Japanese and German internment in Virginia during World War II; the papers of Judge John Paul; Washington lawyer E. Barrett Prettyman, Jr.; and Judge George Revercomb. In addition to documenting the wide range of faculty and alumni activities, the collection is strong in records of late nineteenth and early twentieth century law practice.

An original signed copy of Brown v. Board, from the E. Barrett Prettyman Papers. Duke family portrait, R.T.W. Duke, Jr., William R. Duke, and R.T.W. Duke from the Duke & Duke papers

In 2000 the department acquired the papers of the Dalkon Shield Claimants Trust. This large collection traces the history of the production and marketing of the Dalkon Shield, the intrauterine contraceptive device manufactured and sold by the A.H. Robins Company, from the company's purchase of the device through its tort litigation and subsequent bankruptcy which was resolved in 1988. The collection also documents the establishment and history of the Dalkon Shield Claimants Trust, 1988-2000, which settled over 218,000 claims.

Special Collections also houses records of the Third United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea, both an extensive collection of the official documents of the conference and personal files of some of the negotiators.

Most recently law professor Brandon Garrett and business research librarian Jon Ashley have collected a series of organizational prosecution agreements in support of Garrett's research on structural reform prosecution. They have created a Prosecution Agreements website to serve as a resource for research concerning federal prosecution of organizations.

Finding Aids

Major collections are recorded in VIRGO, the library's online catalog, where they may be identified by a call number beginning with the letters MSS. All collections have finding aids available in the special collections department. See the list below for finding aids which are available via the Web.

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