Erwin N. Griswold Papers, 1917-1998
| Oberlin College Archives
Administrative/Biographical History
Erwin Nathaniel Griswold (July 14, 1904-November 19, 1994) was born in East Cleveland, Ohio. He was the first child of two Oberlin College alumni: attorney James Harlen (1873-1950; A.B. Oberlin 1898) and Hope (Erwin) Griswold (1877-1962; Ph.B. DePauw University, 1901; enr. Oberlin College, 1898-1900). Following his graduation from Cleveland's Shaw High School in 1921, Griswold enrolled at Oberlin College, where he earned the A.B. (Phi Beta Kappa) in mathematics and the A.M. in political science in 1925. He entered Harvard University Law School in the fall of 1925 and in 1926 won election to the editorial board of the Harvard Law Review, serving as its president during the year 1926/27. He graduated with the LL.B. in 1928 summa cum laude and stayed on to "clerk" for Professor Austin Wakeman Scott (b. 1884), an expert on the law of trusts. Griswold received the S.J.D. (Doctor of Juristic Science) degree in 1929. He received the LL.D. from several universities, including Harvard University (1953), the Universities of Sydney (1951) and Melbourne (1951) in Australia, Princeton University (1968) and Oberlin College (1982). In 1964, he received the D.C.L. (Doctor of Civil Law) degree from Oxford University. He was admitted to the Ohio State Bar in 1929, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts bar in 1935, the District of Columbia bar in 1973, and to the Supreme Court of the United States in 1932.
After a mere six weeks practicing law with the Cleveland firm of Griswold, Green, Palmer & Hadden (his father's firm), Griswold moved to Washington, D.C. to work in the Office of the Solicitor General Charles Evans Hughes, Jr. In 1934, he returned to Cambridge for a one-year appointment as Assistant Professor on the Harvard Law School faculty; he was promoted to full professor in 1935. He assumed the post of Dean of the Faculty of Law and Charles Stebbins Fairchild Professor of Law in 1946. Griswold's tenure as Dean was marked by change. It saw the enlargement of the school's curriculum to include such specialized topics as labor relations, family law, and copyright; the admission of women (1949); the appointment of many new faculty, among them Derek Bok, Kingman Brewster, Archibald Cox, and Alan Dershowitz; and the expansion of the Law School's physical plant, library holdings, and financial resources.
Griswold held several trustee positions throughout his career, but in no such position did he serve longer than as a trustee of Oberlin College. He was elected in 1936, retired in 1980, but remained active as an Honorary Trustee until his death in 1994. From his office in Cambridge and during visits over more than 60 years, he maintained an intimate involvement with the life of the college in all its aspects, administrative, financial, academic, and social. He served on numerous committees of the Board and was instrumental in securing the appointments of presidents William E. Stevenson (1900-85) and Robert Kenneth Carr (1908-79) in 1945 and 1959. Once in office, these presidents regularly sought his counsel. During the governance controversies of the years 1959 to 1973, Griswold sought to join the weight of the Board of Trustees to the power of the college presidency in order to counterbalance what he and others viewed as the increasingly unopposed authority of the faculty.
After two decades of service, Dean Griswold retired from the Harvard deanship in 1967 as Langdell Professor of Law Emeritus. On the day of his retirement, October 23, he was confirmed as U.S. Solicitor General. Serving under presidents Lyndon B. Johnson (1908-73) and Richard M. Nixon (1913-1994), he argued more cases before the Supreme Court than almost any other lawyer in history. In 1971, Griswold took the government's position on non-disclosure in New York Times Co. v. United States, the "Pentagon Papers" case, which the government lost. At age 69, in 1973, he retired from public life to join the Washington offices of Jones, Day, Reavis, and Pogue, where he practiced as a partner and as a mentor to young lawyers.
Griswold's many legal publications include Spendthrift Trusts (Albany: M. Bender, 1936, 2nd ed., 1947), Cases and Materials on Federal Taxation (Chicago: Foundation Press, 1940, 6th ed., 1966), Cases on Conflict of Laws (Chicago: Foundation Press, 1941, rev. ed. 1964), The 5th Amendment Today (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1954), Law and Lawyers in the United States (London: Stevens, 1964, Hamlyn Lectures), and Federal Income Taxation: Principles and Policies (1976). He contributed many articles to professional journals and authored numerous book reviews, special lectures, and In Memoriam remarks. His autobiography is entitled, Ould Fields, New Corne: The Personal Memoirs of a Twentieth Century Lawyer (St. Paul: West Publishing, 1992).
Griswold was a trustee of Bradford Junior College (1942-49); the Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association (1942-46); and the Harvard Law Review Association (1938-67). He was a fellow and former vice-president (1946-48) of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences; a former president of the Association of American Law Schools (1957-58); a former president of the American Bar Foundation (1971-74); and a former director of the American Council of Learned Societies. From 1961 to 1967, he served as a member of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission. He is a fellow of the British Academy and an Honorary Bencher, Inner Temple (London).
On December 30, 1931, Griswold married Harriet Allena Ford. They had two children, Hope Eleanor (A.B. Oberlin 1954) and William Erwin (A.B. Oberlin 1959). Griswold established the James H. and Hope E. Griswold fund, the Oberlin College Library's largest endowed acquisitions fund, in memory of his parents. He died on November 19, 1994, at 90 years of age.
SOURCES CONSULTED
Erwin Nathaniel Griswold: Illustrious Alumnus: A Retrospective Exhibition Honoring Dean Griswold on the 60th Anniversary of his Graduation from the Harvard Law School (6 September 1988-8 January 1989), Manuscript Division, Harvard Law School Library, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1988.
Staff file (28) of Erwin N. Griswold, Oberlin College Archives.
Author: Valerie S. Komor Subjects (links to similar collections) Forms of Material (links to similar genres) Administrative Information
The papers of Erwin N. Griswold cover the term of Griswold's service on the Oberlin College Board of Trustees from 1936 to 1992. Griswold served on the Board until 1980, and remained an Honorary Trustee until his death in 1994. The more extensive archive relating to Griswold's service as a professor of law and Dean of the Harvard University Law School (1946-67) is held by the Harvard University Law School Library. Records pertaining to Griswold's service (1967-73) as U. S. Solicitor General are located at the National Archives and Records Service.
The Griswold papers are arranged into six record series: I. General Correspondence, II. Committee Files, III. Writings and Interview Transcripts, IV. Miscellaneous Materials, V. Awards and Degrees, and VI. Photographs. Within series, files are typically arranged alphabetically by topic or type of material. The file headings employed by Erwin Griswold and by the archivist in 1977 are largely maintained in the present arrangement.
During the 55-year period from 1936 to 1992 covered in these papers, decisions were made which transformed the "old" or nineteenth-century Oberlin College into the modern institution it remains. The general correspondence of Erwin Griswold offers an especially useful overview of the role he and other members of the Board of Trustees played during this time. The years encompass the administrations of six college presidents: Ernest Hatch Wilkins (1927-46), William Edwards Stevenson (1946-59), Robert Kenneth Carr (1960-70), Robert Works Fuller (1970-74), Emil Charles Dannenberg (1975-82), and S. Frederick Starr (1983-94). Topics covered in the correspondence include tenure decisions and other personnel actions, including the controversial Orville C. Jones termination in 1945, faculty vs. administrative control, development and alumni affairs, budget and investment decisions, the closing of the Graduate School of Theology, building construction, admissions procedures, and financial aid policies. Griswold's correspondence with Starr is especially voluminous, covering a range of topics from the college's finances and administration to Eastern European affairs.
Closely related thematically to the correspondence are the committee files located in series II. These files, containing both correspondence and attached and related materials, document the work of the various committees of the Board and other college committees on which Griswold sat as a member or as committee chair. Board of Trustee committees represented in these papers are the Executive, Appointments, Investment, Legal Questions and By-Laws, Nomination of Trustees, Pension, Personnel, and Trustee-Faculty Conference committees. Of special interest are files relating to the formation in 1945 of the Committee on the Presidency and those relating to the work of the Presidential Search Committee (1973-75). Correspondence bearing on the search which led to the appointment of President Stevenson in 1945 and President Carr in 1959 is located in the records of the Board of Trustees (RG 1).
Two biographical items extant in this collection include a special issue of the Harvard Law Review (June, 1973), and an oral history interview transcript prepared by the American College of Trial Lawyers in 1989. The editors of the Harvard Law Review dedicated an issue to Erwin Griswold on the occasion of his retirement as Solicitor General. Contents include recollections and tributes by colleagues and friends. The interview covers Griswold's childhood in Cleveland, his years at Oberlin College and Harvard Law School, his early European travels, his professional legal career, and his views on legal education, American legal history, and various Supreme Court justices. This interview should be supplemented by a 1984 oral history interview conducted by Oberlin history professor Geoffrey Blodgett, focusing on Griswold's Oberlin experience, in Record Group 43.
Griswold's legal scholarship is not well represented in these papers. A complete bibliography of his books, articles, and opinions is not yet assembled; however, a partial bibliography can be compiled with reference to Current Law Index, Index to Legal Periodicals, and the "Lexis" legal research database. The typescript manuscript of Griswold's 1925 Oberlin College M.A. thesis, "The Doctrine of Judicial Review", is available in the Oberlin College Library Special Collections Department, together with various reprints, extracts from periodicals, and select publications.
SERIES DESCRIPTIONS
Series I. General Correspondence, 1936-92 (5.4 l.f.)
General correspondence of Erwin Griswold, organized as originally maintained, alphabetically by name or subject and thereunder chronologically.
Series II. Committee Files, 1936-83 (2.8 l.f.)
Correspondence filed with attachments, including official memoranda, reports and printed materials, relating to Oberlin College Board of Trustees committees and other committees. Arranged alphabetically by committee name.
Series III. Writings and Interviews, 1973-77, 1987-88 (0.2 l.f.)
Oral history interview transcript (copy), aural transcription of a talk, and several reprints. Arranged alphabetically by type of material.
Series IV. Miscellaneous Materials, 1921-24, 1973 (0.4 l.f.)
This series includes three items: a special issue of the Harvard Law Review (June, 1973) dedicated to Griswold; an "Official Report of the Republican National Convention, 1924," edited and signed by local national student chairman Ralph M. Andrews '25; and scrapbook, 1921-24. The scrapbook, assembled by Griswold when he was an Oberlin undergraduate, contains photographs, programs, dance cards, correspondence, and other miscellany.
Series V. Awards and Degrees, 1917-82 (1.0 l.f.)
Graduation certificates, degrees, honorary degrees, and certificates of appreciation awarded to Erwin N. Griswold are included.
Series VI. Photographs, 1998, n.d. (1.5 l.f.)
Photography studio portraits, Nixon campaign photographs, and snapshots of Erwin N. Griswold and others. Also in this series are installation photographs documenting an exhibit on Griswold in Stevenson Hall in 1998.
INVENTORY
Series I. General Correspondence, 1936-92 (5.4 l.f.)
Box 1
"A", 1970-74
Aluminum shares, 1940
Alumni Association, 1937-67, 1969-73 (3f)
Athletics, 1972-73
Aughenbaugh, Karl, 1960-65
Box 1a
"B", 1968-92 (5f)
Box 2
Board of Trustees, 1936-65 (8f)
Box 3
Board of Trustees, 1966-94 (6f)
Building maintenance, reserve system for, 1939-40
By-Laws of Oberlin College, 1972-88
Box 3a
"C", 1968-92 (2f)
Care, Norman S., 1972-73
Carlson, Acting President Ellsworth C., 1974-75
Box 4
Carr, President Robert Kenneth, 1959-70 (8f)
Class of 1925, 1969-1974 (2f)
Box 5
Class of 1925, 1969-76 (2f)
College Faculty Council, 1973
"D", 1970-92 (2f)
Danenberg, Emil C., 1975-82 (2f)
Davis, Jerome, 1946-57
Davis, William P., 1941-49 (2f)
Box 6
Davis, William P., 1950-58 (3f)
Development Program, 1953-67 (3f)
Director of Admissions (William Seaman,
Robert L. Jackson), 1947-60
"E", 1974, 1987-91 (3f)
Box 7
"F", 1967-91 (4f)
Fauver, King E., 1945-59
Fuller, President Robert W., 1970-73
"G", 1973-90 (2f)
Graduate School of Theology, 1965
Griswold Library Book Fund, 1945-67
"H", 1970-90 (4f)
Box 8
Hall Auditorium, 1939-63
Harris, Thomas E., 1949-52
Investment Executive, office of, 1936-53
"J", 1971
Jackson, Robert L: see above, Director
of Admissions
Jones, George M: see below, Secretary
of Oberlin College
Jones, Orville C., 1943, 1945
"K", 1968-75
"L", 1969-91 (2f)
Long-Range Planning, 1992
Love, Donald M: see below, Secretary
of Oberlin College
Box 9
"M", 1969-91 (4f)
"N", 1969-73
Newsom, Earl, 1955-65 (2f)
"O", 1970-91 (3f)
Obenhaus, Victor, 1940-58
Box 9a
Oberlin College miscellaneous, 1936-47 (6f)
Box 10
Oberlin College miscellaneous, 1946-67 (10f)
Box 11
"P", 1970-90 (3f)
Peirce, Louis S., 1946-65 (3f)
"R", 1968-91 (2f)
Reid, John C., 1969-76
Reid, John C., Fellowship Fund, 1986-87
"S", 1974-76
Seaman, William: see above,
Director of Admissions
Box 12
Secretary of Oberlin College (2f)
Jones, G.M., 1936-37
Love, D.M., 1938-63
Williams, J.R., 1963-64
60th Reunion, 1984-85
South Africa Protest, 1979
Starr, President S. Frederick, 1983-91 (6f)
Box 13
Stevenson, President William E., 1946-54 (8f)
Box 14
Stewart, Blair, 1949-59
"T", 1973-90 (2f)
"V", 1970-72, 1984-87 (2f)
"W", 1968-76
"WXYZ", 1976-88
Williams, J.R.: see above, Secretary
of Oberlin College
Box 15
Wilkins, President Ernest Hatch, 1936-43 (9f)
Box 16
Wilkins, Ernest Hatch, 1944-46 (3f)
Wittke, Carl F., 1937-46
Wood, Harold S., 1944-47
Series II. Committee Files, 1936-83 (2.8 l.f.)
Box 17
Appointments Committee (Board of
Trustees), 1937-61 (7f)
Box 18
Buildings, Special Committee on, 1939-58
Executive Committee (Board of Trustees),
1936-48, 1975-77 (2f)
Faculty Committees, 1973
Oberlin Faculty Tuition Remission, Special
Committee on, 1975-76 (3f)
Box 19
Investment Committee (Board of Trustees):
Chicago Title & Trust investigation,
1936-38 (5f)
Box 20
Legal Questions and By-Laws (Board of Trustees),
Committee on, 1938-67 (4f)
Box 21
Nomination of Trustees and Trustee Committees,
Committee on, 1938-63 (12f)
Box 22
Organization of the College, Special Committee
on, 1948-59 (2f)
Box 23
Pension Committee (Board of Trustees), 1936-63 (10f)
Box 24
Personnel Committee (Board of Trustees), 1973-83 (2f)
Presidency, Committee on the, 1945
Presidential Search Committee, 1973-75 (3f)
Box 25
Trustee-Faculty Conference Committee, 1956-65 (4f)
Series III. Writings, Talks, and Interview Transcripts, 1973-77, 1987-88 (0.2 l.f.)
Box 26
Oral history interview transcript, 1988 258 pp.
Talk, "Appearing Before the Supreme Court"
(aural transcript), 1987
Talk, “Academic Responsibility,” 1957 [2003/003]
Publications (reprints), 1973-77
Box 26a
Ould Fields, New Corne: The Personal Memoirs
of a Twentieth Century Lawyer, 1992
by Erwin N Griswold
Series IV. Miscellaneous Materials, 1921-24, 1973 (0.4 l.f.)
Box 27 (oversize)
Harvard Law Review, special issue, June, 1973
"Official Report of the Republican National
Convention," 1924
Scrapbook, 1921-24 (1 vol.)
Series V. Awards and Degree, 1917-82
Box 28-29
See case file for listing.
Series VI. Photographs, 1998, n.d. (1.52 l.f.)
Box 30 (Oversize) [2012/012]
Studio portraits of Erwin N. Griswold, n.d.
Loose photographs of Erwin N. Griswold
and others, n.d.
Griswold exhibit installation photographs,
Stevenson Hall, 1998