Roy Lucas collection on abortion litigation
Scope and Contents
This collection documents state and federal abortion laws and court cases in the United States, spanning 1967 to 1973. It contains state and federal abortion litigation case files, documents, and correspondence; materials of the James Madison Institute; research files on aspects of abortion law, including studies of the Constitution and state laws on rights of the fetus; and publications regarding abortion and abortion laws including newspaper clippings about court cases.
Dates
- Creation: 1967-1973
Creator
- Lucas, Roy (Person)
Conditions Governing Access
Collection is open for research.
Conditions Governing Use
University records - Copyright held by Wesleyan University; all other copyright is retained by the creator - In Copyright – Non-Commercial Use Permitted
Biographical / Historical
Following graduation from New York University Law School in 1967, Roy Lucas published a landmark article, "Federal Constitutional Limitations on the Enforcement and Administration of State Abortion Statutes," in the North Carolina Law Review. Soon his interest in student rights and other civil liberties issues were overwhelmed as abortion litigation came to him in ever-growing volume. In 1969 and 1970 he helped found, with Morris Dees, the James Madison Constitutional Law Institute with offices in New York City and Montgomery, Alabama. In 1972 and 1973 this organization was changed somewhat to become the Population Law Center with offices in San Francisco and Washington, D. C.
Extent
14 Linear Feet (28 hollinger boxes)
Language of Materials
English
Abstract
This collection documents state and federal abortion laws and court cases in the United States, spanning 1967-1973. It contains state and federal abortion litigation case files, documents, and correspondence; materials of the James Madison Institute; research files on aspects of abortion law, including studies of the Constitution and state laws on rights of the fetus; and publications regarding abortion and abortion laws including newspaper clippings about court cases.
Arrangement
The collection is organized into six series: Abortion Cases, Miscellaneous Correspondence, Lucas Papers, Miscellaneous Cases, Research, and Publications. The bulk of the material is contained within the first series on Abortion Cases, in which the materials are arranged by state, and then chronologically within each state.
Ms. Toby Singer, Wesleyan class of 1974, has undertaken the organization, the boxing and the description of these papers. The work was done in connection with a senior thesis project which took changes in abortion law as its subject. The description of Series and the Container List that follow are entirely the work of Ms. Singer.
Immediate Source of Acquisition
Mr. Lucas agreed to place his closed files on abortion cases in the Wesleyan University Collection on Legal Change. The agreement was made in 1969 and a small volume of papers have been received from time to time until the Supreme Court's momentous abortion decision on January 22, 1973 in Roe v. Wade from Texas and Doe v. Bolton from Georgia. At this point a substantial file of papers from Roy Lucas was released to the Collection at Wesleyan.
Subject
- Lucas, Roy (Person)
- James Madison Institute (Organization)
- Roe, Jane, 1947-2017 (Person)
- Wade, Henry (Person)
- Title
- Roy Lucas collection on abortion litigation, 1967-1973
- Status
- Completed
- Author
- Processed by Toby Singer, 1974 Encoded by Andrea Benefiel, March 2010 Migrated to ArchivesSpace by Amanda Nelson, August 2020
- Date
- August 14, 2020
- Description rules
- Describing Archives: A Content Standard
- Language of description
- Undetermined
- Script of description
- Code for undetermined script
- Language of description note
- English
Repository Details
Part of the Special Collections & Archives Repository