There are now 3 more Amer­i­can Civil Lib­er­ties Union find­ing aids avail­able online and acces­si­ble to the public:

The Project Files series con­tains the records of twelve of the ACLU’s projects, which each addressed an area of civil lib­er­ties vio­la­tions. Project records typ­i­cally con­sist of case files, research files, project pub­lic­ity cor­re­spon­dence. The best doc­u­mented projects are the Children’s Rights Project Women’s Rights Project, to a lesser extent the Arts Cen­sor­ship Project, Cap­i­tal Pun­ish­ment Project, Repro­duc­tive Free­dom Project.

The Sub­ject Files series con­tains arti­cles, reports, court doc­u­ments, and other mate­ri­als col­lected by the ACLU dur­ing the course of their work. The main sub­jects are drugs, home­less­ness, and Supreme Court nom­i­na­tions, largely of Robert Bork. Other sig­nif­i­cant sub­jects in the series include cam­paign finance, dis­crim­i­na­tion, envi­ron­men­tal equity and racism, school pen­sion plans, state con­sti­tu­tions, and welfare.

The Legal Case Files series doc­u­ments the ACLU’s involve­ment in lit­i­ga­tion, rang­ing from files col­lected on cases for research pur­poses to records of cases they were sig­nif­i­cantly involved in. The records include doc­u­ments filed with the court, cor­re­spon­dence, lawyer’s notes, depo­si­tions and expert tes­ti­mony, tran­scripts of the tri­als, news­pa­per clip­pings, and research mate­ri­als on the back­ground of the case and legal precedent.

The Legal Case Files series con­tains records about over 1,500 cases, with the major­ity being files col­lected on non-ACLU cases for research on the broad range of civil lib­er­ties which the ACLU inves­ti­gates. Com­mon sub­jects include the sep­a­ra­tion of church and state, pub­lic edu­ca­tion, racial and sex­ual dis­crim­i­na­tion, injus­tice in the legal sys­tem, ille­gal sur­veil­lance and search, and pro­tect­ing the free­dom of speech and expres­sion, as well as pol­i­tics and vot­ing, infor­ma­tion access and pri­vacy, fair employ­ment and health care prac­tices, and immi­gra­tion. Cases which are par­tic­u­larly well doc­u­mented include Car­los Rivera v. John Row­land about the pub­lic defender sys­tem in Con­necti­cut and three cases about pub­lic edu­ca­tion: Brown v. Board of Edu­ca­tion, Charlet v. Leg­is­la­ture of Louisiana, and Harper v. Hunt.

For more infor­ma­tion about the ACLU col­lec­tions check out our recent post:
http://blogs.princeton.edu/mudd/2012/03/american-civil-liberties-union-records-new-series-available.html

–Adri­ane Hanson