Inside the Supreme Court
Petition to Decision
Papers of Supreme Court Justices on Civil Rights Cases
David Achtenberg
Professor & Law Foundation Scholar
UMKC School of Law
Kansas City, MO 64110-2499
816-235-2382
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Petition to Decision Home Page |
| Archive |
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Researcher Information |
Relating to Section 1983
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The Archive The Justice's Papers in Archive Order |
Researcher Information Materials for Further Research |
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Significance |
Caveats |
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Justice Powell maintained a number of files that appear to have served as general reference material relating to Section 1983. Many of the documents in these files were prepared for particular cases, but appear to have been put in notebooks or subject-titled memoranda files for future use. For example, the files include a "Civil Rights Act Notebook" containing numerous memoranda dealing with Section 1983, as well as files with titles such as "Civil Rights Acts—General," "Younger Doctrine," "11th Amendment," and "Section 1983—History and Interpretation." There are also some documents that reflect how Justice Powell dealt with his clerks and a few that illustrate substantive debates among the Justices. |
This is not an ordinary case file. Unlike
digital case files (e.g., the case file on
Monell), the digital boxes and files
in this portion of the website are not complete
duplicates of the original hard copy boxes and files. Instead, I have
included copies of documents that seemed relevant and omitted ones that
did not. All of the documents are from the 1970's. Since portion of the website does not tell the story of a case, there is no timeline for this file and only very limited researcher information. The best way to access the documents is through the Archive Page which contains a description of each document. |