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This is a finding aid. It is a description of archival material held in the Wilson Library at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Unless otherwise noted, the materials described below are physically available in our reading room, and not digitally available through the World Wide Web. See the Duplication Policy section for more information.
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Collection Overview
| Size | 14.5 feet of linear shelf space (approximately 5000 items) |
| Abstract | The papers of Eugene Gressman, white attorney, law professor, and law clerk for United States Supreme Court Justice Frank Murphy from 1943 to 1948 chiefly document Gressman's association with the Supreme Court and Gressman's legal scholarship and teaching. Materials generated during Gressman's law clerkship for Justice Murphy include handwritten and annotated typescript drafts of Murphy's opinions; printed court opinions; newspaper clippings; memorandums circulated among the justices; and notes and letters exchanged between Gressman and Murphy and between Murphy and other justices especially Felix Frankfurter, Hugo Black, William O. Douglas, and Chief Justice Harlan F. Stone. Approximately forty of the hundreds of cases heard before the United States Supreme Court between 1943 and 1948 are documented to varying extents in the loose papers, including Korematsu v. United States; Lee v. Mississippi; Screws v. United States; and Steele v. Louisville & Nashville Railway Co. Legal and other topics include equal protection and due process under the Fourteenth Amendment; the incarceration of Japanese Americans during the Second World War; racial discrimination; religious freedom; and New Deal legislation and agencies, especially the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, Securities Exchange Act of 1934, and the Securities and Exchange Commission. Other materials are Gressman's professional papers as an attorney, legal scholar, and law professor; subject files; and materials by and about Frank Murphy including speeches, correspondence, and articles. Subject files pertain to the Supreme Court; the role of law clerks; Korematsu v. United States; Christoffel v. United States; and Gressman's representation of John N. Mitchell and H.R. Haldeman, defendants in cases related to Richard Nixon's presidency and the Watergate political scandal. |
| Creator | Gressman, Eugene, 1917-2010. |
| Curatorial Unit | University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Library. Southern Historical Collection. |
| Language | English |
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Information For Users
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Processing Information
Summary description was created in October 2017 to provide information about unprocessed materials in Wilson Special Collections Library.
Encoded by: Laura Smith, October 2017
Updated by: Laura Hart and Rebecca Stubbs, November 2019.
The materials documenting Gressman's tenure as a law clerk for Justice Frank Murphy on the United States Supreme Court arrived at Wilson Special Collections Library as loose papers housed within large, overstuffed, and unlabeled accordion folders. No order for these loose papers was discernible. In 2019, technical services archivists rehoused the loose documents in archival folders and filed them in boxes 1 through 7, but they did not attempt to impose order or arrange the loose documents. Researchers are advised to examine all seven boxes of loose papers if they are looking for information and insights about the justices, law clerks, court cases, legal arguments, and other matters related to the Supreme Court between 1943 and 1948.
Since August 2017, we have added ethnic and racial identities for individuals and families represented in collections. To determine identity, we rely on self-identification; other information supplied to the repository by collection creators or sources; public records, press accounts, and secondary sources; and contextual information in the collection materials. Omissions of ethnic and racial identities in finding aids created or updated after August 2017 are an indication of insufficient information to make an educated guess or an individual's preference for identity information to be excluded from description. When we have misidentified, please let us know at wilsonlibrary@unc.edu.
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Subject Headings
The following terms from Library of Congress Subject Headings suggest topics, persons, geography, etc. interspersed through the entire collection; the terms do not usually represent discrete and easily identifiable portions of the collection--such as folders or items.
Clicking on a subject heading below will take you into the University Library's online catalog.
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Related Collections
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Biographical Information
Eugene Gressman (1917-2010) of Lansing, Mich., was a lawyer, legal scholar, law professor, and member of the United States Supreme Court bar. He graduated from the University of Michigan Law School in 1940. From 1943 to 1948, he served as the law clerk for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Frank Murphy (1890-1949).
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Scope and Content
The papers of Eugene Gressman, white attorney, law professor, and law clerk for United States Supreme Court Justice Frank Murphy from 1943 to 1948 chiefly document Gressman's association with the Supreme Court and Gressman's legal scholarship and teaching.
Materials generated during Gressman's law clerkship for Justice Murphy include handwritten and annotated typescript drafts of Murphy's opinions; printed court opinions; newspaper clippings; memorandums circulated among the justices; and notes and letters exchanged between Gressman and Murphy and between Murphy and other justices especially Felix Frankfurter, Hugo Black, William O. Douglas, and Chief Justice Harlan F. Stone.
Approximately forty of the hundreds of cases heard before the United States Supreme Court between 1943 and 1948 are documented to varying extents in the loose papers, including Korematsu v. United States; Lee v. Mississippi; Screws v. United States; and Steele v. Louisville & Nashville Railway Co. Legal and other topics include equal protection and due process under the Fourteenth Amendment; the incarceration of Japanese Americans during the Second World War; racial discrimination; religious freedom; and New Deal legislation and agencies, especially the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, Securities Exchange Act of 1934, and the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Other materials are Gressman's professional papers as an attorney, legal scholar, and law professor; subject files; and materials by and about Frank Murphy including speeches, correspondence, and articles. Subject files pertain to the Supreme Court; the role of law clerks; Korematsu v. United States; Christoffel v. United States; and Gressman's representation of John N. Mitchell and H.R. Haldeman, defendants in cases related to Richard Nixon's presidency and the Watergate political scandal.
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Series Quick Links
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Series 1. United States Supreme Court Clerkship Materials, circa 1930s-1950s (bulk dates
1943-1948)
Chiefly materials generated during Gressman's law clerkship for Justice Frank Murphy on the United States Supreme Court from 1943 to 1948. Materials include handwritten and annotated typescript drafts of Murphy's opinions; printed court opinions; newspaper clippings; memorandums circulated among the justices; and notes and letters exchanged between Gressman and Murphy and between Murphy and other justices especially Felix Frankfurter, Hugo Black, William O. Douglas, and Chief Justice Harlan F. Stone. Notes, memorandums, and letters exchanged between the justices and clerks document internal discussions of the legal arguments surrounding the cases being reviewed and heard by the court and provide some insight into how the justices worked with each other and the law clerks.
Approximately forty of the hundreds of cases heard before the United States Supreme Court between 1943 and 1948 are documented to varying extents in the loose papers, including Anderson v. Mt. Clemens Pottery Co.; Fisher v. Hurst ; Falbo v. United States; Hartzel v. United States; Korematsu v. United States; Lee v. Mississippi; Screws v. United States; Steele v. Louisville & Nashville Railway Co.; Tennessee Coal, Iron & Railroad Co. v. Muscoda Local No. 123; and Yamashita v. Styer.
Legal and other topics include equal protection and due process under the Fourteenth Amendment; clear and present danger; incarceration of Japanese Americans during the Second World War; war criminals and military justice; espionage; racism, racial segregation, and racial discrimination; religious freedom and conscientious objectors; human trafficking and prostitution; labor unions and workers' rights; cruel and unusual punishment and the death penalty; double jeopardy; police brutality and the murder of African Americans in police custody; bankruptcy; anti-trust legislation; and New Deal legislation and agencies, especially the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, Securities Exchange Act of 1934, and the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Processing Information: The materials documenting Gressman's tenure as a law clerk for Justice Frank Murphy on the United States Supreme Court arrived at Wilson Special Collections Library as loose papers housed within large, overstuffed, and unlabeled accordion folders. No order for these loose papers was discernible. In 2019, technical services archivists rehoused the loose documents in archival folders and filed them in boxes 1 through 7, but they did not attempt to impose order or arrange the loose documents.
Researchers are advised to examine all seven boxes of loose papers if they are looking for information and insights about the justices, law clerks, court cases, legal arguments, and other matters related to the Supreme Court between 1943 and 1948.
Processing Information: Most collection material arrived at Wilson Special Collections Library in unlabeled file folders. In 2019 technical services archivists transcribed any existing folder titles, which are indicated with quotation marks in this finding aid.
Box 1-7
Box 1Box 2Box 3Box 4Box 5Box 6Box 7 |
Loose papers, circa 1930s-1950s (bulk dates 1943-1948) |
| Box 7 |
"Review of Justice Murphy's Opinions," 1944-1945 term and 1945-1946 term |
"Some Reflections on the Reading of Statutes by Mr. Justice Felix Frankfurter," 1947 |
|
Box 8-9
Box 8Box 9 |
Clippings, circa 1930s-1950s |
| Box 10 |
"1944-45 Opinions"Clippings. |
Box 10-11
Box 10Box 11 |
"1945-46 Opinions"Clippings. |
| Box 11 |
"1946-47 Term"Clippings. |
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Series 2. Associate Justice Frank Murphy Papers, circa 1930s-2000s
Printed items, newspaper clippings, typescript documents, notes, and scattered professional correspondence received and sent by Frank Murphy (1890-1949). Printed items include a published booklet of selected addresses and speeches delivered by Murphy in the 1930s and articles about Murphy, most written after his death in 1949. Typescripts are biographical notes about Murphy and his legal career and copies of Murphy's addresses, speeches, and statements given to Congress when he served as the attorney general of the United States. Topics of commencement addresses and other speeches Murphy delivered include civil liberty, religious freedom, and democracy. Other materials include memorials and condolences following Murphy's death and legal scholarship about Murphy's time on the Unites States Supreme Court.
| Box 12 |
1930s-1950s |
| Box 13 |
1950s-2000s |
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Series 3. Eugene Gressman Papers, circa 1930s-2000s
Professional papers document Gressman's legal career as a Supreme Court law clerk, attorney, judge, professor of law, and scholar. Personal papers are slight, but include information about Gressman's mother Bess Gressman in the 1930s and photographs of his young children.
| Box 13 |
Bess Gressman, circa 1930-1936Materials related to Gressman's mother Bess Gressman, a librarian at the Birchard Public Library in Fremont, Ohio, and the controversy and law suit related to the library board's demand for her resignation. |
| Box 14 |
1930s-1960sChiefly professional correspondence received by Gressman, including letters pertaining to his candidacy for a judgeship in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia. Other materials include newspaper clippings, Gressman's student work from the University of Michigan School of Law, several small keys to dockets in the United States Supreme Court from Gressman's tenure as Murphy's law clerk, and a pin-back button protesting the selective service draft. |
| Box 15 |
1970s-2000sCorrespondence, teaching materials including notebooks and classroom material for a seminar on Supreme Court practice; curriculum vitae; speeches and addresses; and materials related to tributes and awards received by Gressman. |
Box 24-29
Box 24Box 25Box 26Box 27Box 28Box 29 |
Miscellaneous professional and personal papers, circa 1930s-2000sIncludes professional correspondence, newspaper clippings, printed materials, and notes related to Gressman's legal career, legal scholarship, and teaching. |
| Image Folder PF-5544/1 |
Photographs, circa 1950s-2000sBlack-and-white prints. Color prints. Black-and-white photographic prints depicting Eugene Gressman in duplicate copies of professional portraits from the late 1940s and early 1950s, his young children in candid shots taken in the early 1950s, and his daughter Margot Gressman in duplicate copies of a school portrait taken in 1964. Also included are color photographic prints depicting a graduation ceremony at the Seton Hall University School of Law, circa 1990s. |
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Series 4. Eugene Gressman Subject Files, circa 1940s-2000s
Gressman's subject files are related to his legal scholarship and writings, the United States Supreme Court and Justice Frank Murphy, his teaching positions, and cases for which he served as an attorney including his representation of H.R. Haldeman and John N. Mitchell, who were defendants in court cases related to the Richard Nixon presidency and the Watergate political scandal. Also includes Gressman's scholarship on the Supreme Court decision in Korematsu v. United States, a case related to the incarceration of Japanese Americans during the Second World War.
Processing Information: In 2019 technical services archivists transcribed any existing folder titles, which are indicated with quotation marks in this finding aid.
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Items Separated