Scope and Content Note
The papers of Wiley Blount Rutledge (1894-1949) span the years 1909-1984, with the bulk of the items concentrated in the period 1935-1951. Rutledge was professor and dean of the University of Iowa College of Law in 1939 when appointed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. Elevated to the Supreme Court in February 1943, he served as associate justice of the high court until his death in 1949. The papers are in English and are organized in the following series: Family Papers, General Correspondence, United States Court of Appeals File, Supreme Court File, Academic File, Speeches and Writings, and Miscellany, 1999 Addition, 2016 Addition, and 2018 Addition.
The papers treat most aspects of Rutledge's public career from 1935 onward but are especially complete for the period of his judicial appointments. The Court of Appeals and Supreme Court files include material Rutledge accumulated for those decisions in which he wrote an opinion or exercised influence. Rutledge kept incoming notes and letters and retained copies of most of his outgoing communications and writings, including intracourt memoranda, working drafts of opinions, case memoranda or certiorari, summaries of lawyers' opinions, and conference proceedings. Although most of this material is in the two court series, important communications about his work as a jurist are also contained in the General Correspondence. Among acquaintances in whom Rutledge confided was Ralph F. Fuchs, a friend from Washington University in St. Louis, where Rutledge taught before moving to Iowa. Other correspondents whose letters appear throughout the collection include Willard Wirtz, a future secretary of labor whom Rutledge had hired while dean at the University of Iowa; Huber O. Croft and Mason Ladd, also from Iowa; and Arthur J. Freund, Luther Ely Smith, and Tyrrell Williams, friends from St. Louis days. A third group of insiders was comprised of a chosen few law clerks: Victor Brudney, W. Howard Mann, John Paul Stevens, and Richard F. Wolfson.
The World War II setting of Rutledge's terms on the federal bench generated numerous controversial issues documented in various parts of the Supreme Court File. Decided between 1943 and 1949 were more than a dozen free speech and church-state disputes plus landmark cases concerning search and seizure actions, the right to counsel, and self-incrimination. Also at issue was the relationship between the scope of military authority and the inviolability of certain constitutional principles. Rutledge was engaged in the court's review of the war crimes trial of Japanese General Tomobumi Yamashita (Tomayuki Yamashita) and the decisions regarding the incarceration of Japanese Americans. His dissent in the Yamashita judgment drew a particularly strong public response, as did another sensitive issue, his disagreement with the majority in Everson v. Board of Education in which the court condoned the limited authorization of incidental public funds to parochial schools.
Another prominent topic in the Supreme Court File and other series is the legal review of New Deal agencies and their administrative powers. Rutledge's views on the role of the judiciary and a regulated economy, for instance, can be discerned from notes of talks and manuscripts of articles in the Speeches and Writings File. Rutledge was not a prolific writer, but he contributed book reviews to law journals and spoke out on child labor laws, the direction and quality of legal education, and the role of business corporations in American life. A file of particular significance contains a series of special lectures he delivered at the University of Kansas in 1946, one of which was later published as A Declaration of Legal Faith.
The Academic File includes notes, clippings, and secondary material Rutledge collected while developing lectures and building a casebook on corporate law as a faculty member at the University of Colorado beginning in 1924. Other subjects concern his administrative functions at the University of Iowa and Washington University in St. Louis and reports he wrote on subjects such as child labor laws and the statewide organization of the Iowa Bar Association. Letters on these and related topics are also contained in the General Correspondence, as are frequent communications with former students and exchanges with fellow legal experts concerning Rutledge's involvement with national law organizations, including the American Bar Association, the Association of American Law Schools, and the Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws.
The Family Papers, though not extensive, include Rutledge's correspondence with his father, Wiley Blount Rutledge, Sr., and with his two half-brothers, Dwight J. and Ivan C. Rutledge. Letters to and from several cousins and correspondence with former Michigan Congressman Seymour Howe Person, a brother-in-law whom Rutledge wrote to about legal as well as family matters, are also present.
The 1999 Addition consists largely of family papers, general correspondence, and Supreme Court case files that complement similar series and files in the main portion of the collection. The miscellany section of the addition includes papers of Edna Lindgreen, Rutledge's former secretary, which contains correspondence with Rutledge and other related material.
The majority of the 2016 Addition is comprised of family papers. The family papers for this addition consist mainly of personal letters between Rutledge and his wife, Annabel. Most of the letters relate to family matters and local news, although they include letters relating to their courtship prior to their marriage in 1917. Letters written by Rutledge in May 1939, describe his first few days as a judge on the United States Court of Appeals and his impressions of some of the judges of that court. A letter in general correspondence from Thomas E. Waggaman, a Supreme Court marshal, writes to Rutledge about Rutledge's reimbursement to attend the funeral of Justice Frank Murphy in 1949. Waggaman also includes details pertaining to the confirmation hearings of Tom C. Clark to fill Murphy's vacancy on the Supreme Court.
The 2018 Addition consists of six docket books pertaining to Rutledge's tenure on the Supreme Court. A docket sheet provides a record of the name and docket number of individual cases and documents the votes by the justices regarding the disposition of the case. The docket books for the October terms 1943-1945 are bound volumes. The docket books for the October terms 1946-1948 are sheets that were filed in large notebooks. Library staff removed the sheets from the notebooks for better preservation. At the front of each volume is an alphabetical index by case title that lists the page number for the case. The majority of the dockets are for appellate cases but original and miscellaneous cases are also included.
Correspondents in the collection include Clay R. Apple, A. B. Frey, Bernard C. Gavit, Guy M. Gillette, Henry Joseph Haskell, Jacob M. Lashly, Edna Lindgreen (his secretary), George W. Norris, Joseph R. O'Meara, Jr., John C. Pryor, Robert L. Stearns, and Carl Wheaton. Among the judges with whom Rutledge served and whose names appear prominently in the papers are Hugo LaFayette Black, Harold H. Burton, William O. Douglas, Henry White Edgerton, Felix Frankfurter, Duncan L. Groner, Robert H. Jackson, Justin Miller, Frank Murphy, Harold M. Stephens, Harlan Fiske Stone, and Fred M. Vinson.