Norman Dorsen Papers
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Abstract
Norman Dorsen (1930- ) is a prominent American civil liberties advocate, professor and lawyer. He is best known for his tenure as president of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) between 1976 and 1991. As director of the Arthur Garfield Hays Civil Liberties Program at the New York University School of Law since 1961, Dorsen has participated in a large number of important civil liberties cases, including many in the U.S. Supreme Court. He has likewise been an active participant in debates over civil liberties issues in the press and other venues. The Norman Dorsen Papers consist of materials from Dorsen's legal, political, and scholarly work on a wide variety of civil liberties issues.
Historical/Biographical Note
Professor Dorsen graduated from Columbia University in 1950 and the Harvard Law School in 1953, where he was an editor of the Harvard Law Review(1951-1953). Then, as First Lieutenant in the U.S. Army, he served as an Assistant to the General Counsel of Secretary of the Army (1953-1955); in this capacity he assisted Army attorney Joseph Welch throughout the 1954 Army McCarthy Hearings. Following a Fulbright grant to the London School of Economics (1955 1956), he served as a law clerk to U.S. Court of Appeals Judge Calvert Magruder (1956-1957) and to Justice John Marshall Harlan of the U.S. Supreme Court (1957-1958). In 1958-1960, he practiced law in New York City with Dewey, Ballantine, Bushby, Palmer, and Wood. In 1960, he was campaign manager for William vanden Heuvel, Democrat-Liberal candidate in the 17th Congressional District. Dorsen was also a member of the New York Executive Committee of the Hubert Humphrey presidential campaign in 1960.
Since early 1961 Professor Dorsen has been on the faculty of the New York University Law School, where he is (since 1981) Stokes Professor of Law and (since 1961) director, then (since 1975) co director of the Arthur Garfield Hays Civil Liberties Program, the first American academic institution focused solely on the study of civil liberties. He was also the founding director in 1994 of the Law School's innovative Hauser Global Law School Program, which became the largest program of its kind. In June 2002 he became Counselor to the President of New York University. He has been a Visiting Professor at Harvard Law School, University of California Law School at Berkeley, Chicago Law School, London School of Economics, Florida State University, San Diego Institute on International and Comparative Law, and the University of Paris. He has lectured at many other universities and in 1987 and 1988 he was Fulbright Distinguished Lecturer in Argentina.
From 1969 to 1976 Dorsen served as general counsel to the American Civil Liberties Union and successfully argued several cases before the U.S. Supreme Court, including In re Gault, which established the right of juveniles to due process in delinquency hearings, Tate v. Short, which invalidated certain forms of discrimination in the criminal process, and Levy v. Louisiana, which first recognized constitutional rights of nonmarital children. In 1971 he argued the first abortion rights appeal heard by the Supreme Court ( In re Vuitch). He also helped write the brief and was counsel of record in the landmark case of Roe v. Wade. He has written briefs amicus curiae in many leading cases, including Gideon v. Wainwright, the Pentagon Paperscase, and U.S. v. Nixon.He brought to the Supreme Court in 1969 one of the first cases challenging discrimination against gay people.
In 1965-1966 Dorsen served as Reporter-Draftsman on a committee of the National Conference of Commissioners of Uniform State Laws that produced a Model Anti-Discrimination Act, which influenced subsequent civil rights legislation. In 1970-1972 he was Executive Director of the Special Committee on Courtroom Conduct of the Bar Association of the City of New York. He was the founding president of the Society of American Law Teachers in 1972-1973. In 1973-1975 he was a founding member of the Committee for Public Justice. In 1975 1977 Dorsen chaired the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare's Review Panel on New Drug Regulation. In 1976 he was elected president of the ACLU, a post he held until 1991. In 1995 1996, he chaired the U.S. Treasury's Citizens Review Panel that monitored the investigation of the racism and other improper conduct by law enforcement officers at the annual Good O'Boy Roundups in Ocoee, Tennessee. In 1996 he was elected the first president of the U.S. Association of Constitutional Law. From 1996 to 2000 he was Chairman of the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights. He was founding president of the U.S. Association of Constitutional Law in 2000. He has been a member of the New York City Commission on the Status of Women, and has served as a consultant to many institutions, including the U.S. Commission on Social Security, the Native American Rights Fund, Random House publishers, Rutgers University, the BBC, and a unit of the N.Y.C. Landmarks Commission. He has advised other government agencies, including the Commerce Department, the Defense Department, and the Department of Justice. He is also the founder and editorial director of I-CON, the International Journal of Constitutional Law. Dorsen is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a trustee of the Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression.
Professor Dorsen has received honorary degrees from Ripon College in Wisconsin and John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York. The French Minister of Justice awarded him a medal for his civil liberties work, and he has been honored by the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, the Society of American Law Teachers, and other organizations. In December 2000 President Bill Clinton presented him with the Eleanor Roosevelt Human Rights Award. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
For 20 years Dorsen served as editor of the ACLU's series of 50 books on the rights of individuals and groups. He has written numerous scholarly and popular articles on constitutional law and civil liberties, and he has delivered named lectureships at many universities and law schools. As a legal scholar, Dorsen specializes in constitutional law, civil liberties, and comparative constitutional law. He has written or edited 13 books, sometimes with others, including Political and Civil Rights in the U.S., Frontiers of Civil Liberties, The Rights of Americans, None of Your Business: Government Secrecy in America, Disorder in the Court, Our Endangered Rights, The Evolving Constitution, Human Rights in Northern Ireland, Democracy and the Rule of Law; The Unpredictable Constitution, and Comparative Constitutionalism.
Sources:
New York University Annual Survey of American Law58(1) (2001), special issue dedicated to Norman Dorsen.Harvard Civil Rights - Civil Liberties Law Review27(2) (Summer 1992), special issue dedicated to Norman Dorsen.Biographical information on Norman Dorsen the following folders in the Norman Dorsen Papers at Tamiment Library: Box 12, Folders 1 and 2; Box 40, Folders 20 and 21.
Arrangement
Folders arranged chronologically in Series one and seven, alphabetically in Series two through six.
Organized into six series:
Missing Title
- I. Correspondence
- II. Public statements, appearances, and testimonies
- III. Writings, lectures, speeches, and conferences; IV. Subject files
- V. Arthur Garfield Hays Civil Liberties Program
- VI. Private legal work
- VII. Audio-visual materials.
Scope and Content Note
Series I: Correspondence. The bulk of the series consists of carbon copies of Dorsen's outgoing correspondence from 1961 to 2002. Dorsen's correspondents include officials of the ACLU, journalists, judges and U.S. Supreme Court justices, law professors, legislators, high-level federal, state, and municipal officials, leaders of non-governmental organizations, social welfare advocates, and fellow civil libertarians. Of this group, the collection is missing correspondence files from between September 1974 and July 1976 and between January 1983 and June 1985. Among the letters, by date of production, are final drafts of articles and memos. Also included are files of both outgoing and received correspondence classified by Dorsen himself as "personal" (essentially friendly correspondence with colleagues) and "public" correspondence with and about the press (especially letters-to-the-editor). Some of the content of these files overlaps with the "public statements" files in Series II and the "politics" files in Series IV. The "public" correspondence also contains private correspondence with journalists and politicians. Of this group, the collection is missing the Personal correspondence for 1989 and the Public correspondence for 1968-1970. Note that most folders in all series also contain correspondence.
Series II: Public statements, appearances, and testimonies. Correspondence, newspaper clippings, and other documentation related to Norman Dorsen's statements to the press (including opinion editorials and letters-to-the-editor) and personal appearances at debates, panel discussions, conferences, etc., as well as drafts and final texts of testimony given before the U.S. Congress, its various subcommittees, and before independent public commissions.
Series III: Writings, lectures, speeches, and conferences. Correspondence and other documents related to the research, writing, and publication of Dorsen's articles, books, lectures, papers, and speeches, as well as documentation of conferences in which Dorsen participated, including post-conference editorial work. Note that files on conferences organized by the Committee for Public Justice and the Hays Civil Liberties Program are contained in Series IV and V.
Series IV: Subject files. Files in this series contains correspondence, records, and other documentation of Dorsen's participation in or observation of American and international civil liberties issues as well as organizations devoted to public action in defense of civil liberties or in favor of their expansion. Also included are files less directly connected to civil liberties issues, such as the following: those related to Dorsen's participation in electoral, legislative, related parliamentary processes, and judicial appointments; Dorsen's work in the Office of the Department Counselor of the Office of the Secretary of the Army, including, notably, records related to the Army-McCarthy hearings of April-June 1954; Dorsen's work on committee of the New York City and State Bar Associations; and records from the founding of the Society of American Law Teachers, from Dorsen's 1973-1975 presidency.
Series V: Arthur Garfield Hays Civil Liberties Program. Articles, conferences, projects, reports, and research from this institution. The Hays Annual Reports provide summaries of the Hays Program's and Dorsen's own civil liberties activity during the years indicated. Hays Legal Services files comprise a large part of this series, containing records and reports of legal research on behalf of numerous civil rights-related defendants and litigants.
Series VI: Private legal work. This series gathers all correspondence, documents, and records related to Norman Dorsen's private legal work on civil liberties cases (not including those done as part of the Hays Legal Services Program, which are found in Series V).
Series VII: Audio-visual materials. Recordings documenting some of Dorsen's speeches and radio and television appearances.
NOTE: This collection is housed offsite and advance notice is required for use.
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Conditions Governing Access
Materials are open without restrictions.
Conditions Governing Use
Copyright (and related rights to publicity and privacy) to materials in this collection created by Norman Dorsen was not transferred to New York University. Permission to use materials must be secured from the copyright holder.
Preferred Citation
Published citations should take the following form:
Identification of item, date; Collection name; Collection number; box number; folder number;
Tamiment Library/Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives
Elmer Holmes Bobst Library
70 Washington Square South
New York, NY 10012, New York University Libraries.
Location of Materials
Immediate Source of Acquisition
Donated by Norman Dorsen in 2006. The accession number associated with this gift is 2006.008.
Audiovisual Access Policies and Procedures
Audiovisual materials have not been preserved and may not be available to researchers. Materials not yet digitized will need to have access copies made before they can be used. To request an access copy, or if you are unsure if an item has been digitized, please contact tamiment.wagner@nyu.edu with the collection name, collection number, and a description of the item(s) requested. A staff member will respond to you with further information.
Separated Material
Other groups of Norman Dorsen's papers have been deposited in different archival institutions. Many of Dorsen's papers in the Tamiment collection relate in some way to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), but Dorsen's papers from his ACLU presidency (1976-1991) have been placed in the ACLU Archives in the Seeley J. Mudd Manuscript Library at Princeton University (http://findingaids.princeton.edu/collections/MC001.03.01/c02660). Papers concerned primarily with academic matters related to Dorsen's professorship at the New York University School of Law are located in the New York University Archives (http://www.nyu.edu/library/bobst/research/arch/).