The papers of Henry White Edgerton (1888-1970) range from 1910 to 1970, with the bulk of the material dating from 1929 to 1966. The papers document primarily Edgerton's activities as a law professor at Cornell University, 1929-1937, and as a judge for the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, 1937-1970. The collection is organized into a subject file and an addition.

Pertaining chiefly to Edgerton's career as a law professor and his writings, the subject file includes correspondence, drafts of articles, letters to the editor, notes, pamphlets, reports, newspaper clippings, and printed matter. Topics featured are civil liberties, criminology, law school curriculum, and the roles of the three branches of government. Edgerton's ideas on curriculum and criminology are revealed in correspondence with deans and professors at law schools on matters relating to his activities in the Association of American Law Schools. Among the correspondents are Herschel Whitfield Arant, Rufus C. Harris, Justin Miller, Roscoe Pound, J. J. Robinson, and John Barker Waite. Also included is correspondence with Felix Frankfurter and others relating to an article by Edgerton's about the incidence of judicial supremacy over Congress, although these files do not contain any drafts or working papers.

The only correspondence covering an appreciable span of years, 1930-1969, is with Archibald Graustein, an attorney with the Boston law firm of Ropes, Gray, Boyden & Perkins and president of the International Paper Company. The letters, chiefly from Graustein, touch on the opinions of Edgerton in various court cases, personal, family, and business matters, and occasionally on contemporary affairs. Included are references to Edgerton's activities while on the bench of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

Other correspondence documents Edgerton's affiliations with civil liberties organizations and his interest in several trials in which they were involved. There are also several manuscripts written while he was a special attorney in the Department of Justice relating to the National Recovery Administration, and a few items pertaining to three letters to editors by Edgerton. There is no documentation of Edgerton's activities as a private attorney and little information on his classroom lectures.

The addition to the collection, 1944-1967, consists primarily of case files documenting Edgerton's tenure as a judge for the Court of Appeals. The case files include memoranda, opinions, orders, and judgments.