Digital Archive of Blackmum Papers

Great news for Supreme Court researchers.

With support from the National Science Foundation, Jeff Segal, Harold Spaeth, and Lee Epstein have just rolled out the  Digital Archive of the Papers of Harry A. Blackmun. In its present form, the Archive houses .pdfs of the docket sheets and preliminary (pool) memoranda from Blackmun's years on the Rehnquist Court (1986-1993). We hope its contents will interest a wide range of users, from those looking for the votes (and clerk recommendations) in specific cases to those hoping to study trends in the Court's case-selection and decision-making processes.  The Archive's homepage is here. To go directly to the Archive, use this link: http://epstein.law.northwestern.edu/research/BlackmunArchive/

Creating the Archive required Segal, Spaeth, and Epstein to work with hundreds of thousands of digital images.  Therefore, as users spot problems, please send an email to Lee Epstein  (lee-epstein@northwestern.edu).  The researchers will work to quickly correct errors as they become known.  Finally, Jeff, Harold, and Lee realize that the Archive works (and looks) better in some browsers than others.  They are hoping to fix the problem soon.

Comments

[CarolynShapiro]

Thanks, Bill, for highlighting this (to me) very exciting development.

For some nice discussions of some of the potential research projects the archive makes available, see Lee Epstein's post at http://balkin.blogspot.com/2007/09/digital-archive-of-papers-of-harry.html