Converted to EAD3 : Encoded Archival Description (EAD), Version 3 : Release: 1.1.1 : Release Date: 2019-12-16. Validating against latest version of schema.
Contact information: http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.mss/mss.contact
Catalog Record: https://lccn.loc.gov/mm93081957
Collection material in English
The following terms have been used to index the description of this collection in the LC Catalog. They are grouped by name of person or organization, by subject or location, and by occupation and listed alphabetically.
The papers of Edward Bennett Williams, lawyer and sports team owner, were given to the Library of Congress by his wife, Agnes Neill Williams, in 1993.
Videotapes and audiotapes have been transferred to the Library's Motion Picture, Broadcasting, and Recorded Sound Division, where they are identified as part of these papers.
The status of copyright in the unpublished writings of Edward Bennett Williams is governed by the Copyright Law of the United States (Title 17, U.S.C.).
The papers of Edward Bennett Williams are open to research. Researchers are advised to contact the Manuscript Reading Room prior to visiting. Many collections are stored off-site and advance notice is needed to retrieve these items for research use.
Government regulations control the use of classified material in this collection. Manuscript Division staff can furnish information concerning access to and use of classified items.
Researchers wishing to cite this collection should include the following information: Container number, Edward Bennett Williams Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
The papers of Edward Bennett Williams (1920-1988), prominent trial lawyer, advisor to presidents of the United States, and sportsman who was president of the Washington Redskins football team and owner of the Baltimore Orioles baseball franchise, span the years 1920-1990, with the bulk of the material concentrated in the period 1960-1988. The papers are organized into Correspondence, Speeches and Writings, Subject File, Scrapbooks, and Classified Material.
The correspondence, spanning 1960-1988, is general in nature. Cards and letters expressing best wishes in response to Williams' frequent cancer treatments account for much of the correspondence. Correspondents include Brutus J. Clay, Clark M. Clifford, Jack Kent Cooke, Ronald W. Reagan, Eugene Rostow, and Jack Valenti.
Williams's speeches, interviews, participation in panel discussions, and statements, spanning 1956-1988 and indexed through 1988, comprise the largest portion of the Speeches and Writings series. Included in an articles subseries is material related to the chapter "You in Trial Law" that Williams wrote for the 1962 anthology
The Subject File is comprised mainly of material concerning Williams's participation in public policy committees, boards of trustees of schools and colleges, cancer centers, and causes. Files relate to his chairing the American Bar Association Committee on Crime Prevention and Control, and the Funding, Legal, and Legislative Subcommittee of the Mayor's Advisory Committee on Narcotics Addiction, Washington, D.C., in the early 1970s. Williams declined requests from presidents Ford and Reagan to serve as director of the Central Intelligence Agency, but his interest in foreign affairs, defense, and intelligence issues is reflected in files related to his service with the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board in the Ford and Reagan administrations and with the private Committee on the Present Danger. Besides teaching criminal law and evidence for many years at the Georgetown University Law Center in Washington, D.C., in 1971 he was visiting professor of constitutional litigation at the Yale University law school in New Haven, Connecticut, where one of his students was Hillary Rodham Clinton, whose class paper with cover letter is included in the law professorships file.
Forty-eight volumes of scrapbooks, spanning 1946-1988 and indexed through 1978, contain newspaper and magazine articles, souvenir ephemera, and other material that trace Williams's career in law, sports, and politics.
The collection is arranged in five series:
Correspondence sent and received with attached and related material.
Arranged chronologically.
Articles and correspondence.
Arranged chronologically.
Book drafts, correspondence, reviews, proposals, contracts, research notes, and miscellaneous material.
Arranged according to books by Williams, books by others, and books about Williams, and thereunder alphabetically by type of material and subject.
Speeches, statements, interviews, and panel discussions
Arranged chronologically.
Correspondence, memoranda, minutes, transcripts, reports, briefing books, resumes, agendas, legal documents, student papers, classroom material, address books, mailing lists, biographical material, printed matter, and miscellaneous material.
Arranged alphabetically by name of person, subject, organization, or type of material.
Scrapbooks and related material including indexes, memoranda, and lists of unusual items.
Arranged by volume as organized by Williams.
Documents containing national security information removed from the collection.
Arranged and described according to the series and folders from which the items were removed.