Alleged Copyright Theft by Founders of Encyclopaedia Britannica Among Stories Revealed

Thirty years after the University of Virginia School of Law acquired a trove of legal documents from Scotland’s Court of Session, the supreme legal court there, the Law School’s Arthur J. Morris Law Library is building a digital archive and reaching out to partners “across the pond” to open these legal history materials to scholars and the public.

When complete, the archive will provide users with access to the previously hidden histories of people living through an era of profound change.

Last week, the Special Collections team traveled to Edinburgh, Scotland, to present the digital project at the annual meeting of the Scottish Records Association and to meet with colleagues at the University of Edinburgh Library, who are pursuing a similar initiative.

The Court of Session, as Scotland’s highest civil court, hears cases dealing with divorce, real estate, bankruptcy, intellectual property, debt and a variety of other civil matters. In the mid-1980s, the Law Library purchased a collection of documents related to about 2,500 cases heard before the court between 1757 and 1834.

The University of Edinburgh Library, the National Library of Scotland, the Faculty of Advocates Library and the Signet Library hold more than 4,000 volumes of the court’s papers combined.

Unlike the handwritten manuscripts produced by English or American courts from this period, the Court of Session did its work in print. Memorials, petitions and even evidence were given to the court in this form. Today, the clear type makes the collection more accessible to researchers and easier to digitize.

Users will be able to search through a single document or the entire collection, peruse the rich data provided for each case and download documents for free.

War, revolution and the Enlightenment transformed the lives of 18th and 19nth century peoples living around the Atlantic basin. These documents illuminate the lives of Scottish merchants trading with colonial Virginia tobacco planters; provide insight into the transatlantic slave trade; show how Scottish women defend their limited legal rights; and trace conflicts between literary figures and their publishers, among other stories.

For example, the copyright dispute at the heart of Clark v. Bell (1804) opens an entry point into the early history of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Among the sources creators Colin Macfarquhar and Andrew Bell consulted was work by James Clark, a veterinarian and King George III’s farrier in Scotland. In 1801, Clark sued Bell (Macfarquhar having since died) for copyright infringement under the Copyright Act of 1710.

Clark alleged that the two men had incorporated verbatim portions of his two treatises on equine care without his consent. After “the best and most valuable parts of them are inserted in the Encyclopaedia Britannica,” publishers refused to issue new editions of his work, Clark said. He charged that Bell and Macfarquhar had violated the Copyright Act, harming his business interests and reducing his potential income. The court agreed.

The Lords of Session (as the judges are called) sided with Clark and later affirmed judgement on appeal.

What Clark v. Bell offers is a legal window into the creation of one of the most iconic literary productions of the past three centuries. The case documents provide details on the process Bell and Macfarquhar used to assemble the Encyclopaedia’s early editions — and suggest where to look next. (The record makes it clear that Bell and Macfarquhar faced similar accusations from other authors.)

Collaborating with the Edinburgh-based coalition will allow the Law Library’s Special Collections team to continue to bring rich legal materials like these to light as we trade knowledge and expertise with our colleagues abroad.

It will also enable the two groups to reconstruct case histories in digital space, making it easier for scholars, genealogists, bibliophiles and law students to access a complete case record.

Compiled in leather-bound volumes (like similar collections in Scotland) at one point, the Law Library’s documents were removed from their bindings sometime after 1835. They rest now in archival boxes that consume 64 feet of shelf space in the Library’s Special Collections unit — as we steadily continue to digitize their contents.

The Law Library is preparing to release its first batch of documents. Look for them online soon. For more information on the project, including how you can support it, contact archives@law.virginia.edu.

(This article was first published on the University of Virginia School of Law website on November 17, 2017.)

Late Spring brings new growth to Special Collections at the Law Library as academics everywhere turn their thoughts to Summer research and writing. We are fortunate to have two stellar individuals joining the team over the next few months in partnership with UVA’s Institute for Public History to spearhead two important legal history projects. 

Abby Holland, a rising 3rd year American Studies major with a concentration in race and ethnicity, brings her experience working with Civil War diaries in Small Special Collections and the digital tool Neatline to the Dairies of William Minor Lile project. 

Born into an Alabama slaveholding family in 1859, Lile studied law at the University of Virginia in the early 1880s. He later settled in Lynchburg to practice his trade. In 1893, UVA’s Board of Visitors appointed Lile to a law professorship in the expectation that he would succeed his great uncle, John B. Minor, as head of the law department. Minor died in 1895. Nine years later, during a period of administrative reorganization, university president Edwin Alderman named Lile as the Law School’s first dean. Lile died in 1935.

Lile produced an eleven-volume journal over the course of his adult life. The entries begin in 1882 and cease in 1932. They record Lile’s experiences in post-Civil War and Reconstruction Virginia as the United States entered the Gilded Age and the new international order. Lile’s journals illuminate the intersection of local and national politics and culture. They detail his participation in numerous Virginia and regional legal cases, comment on Democratic and Republican politics at the state and federal levels, technological changes such as the introduction of automobiles in Charlottesville, prohibition activities, and economic booms and busts that gripped the nation. 

Abby will spend the summer developing her digital history skills by preparing a new transcription of one of Lile’s volumes and writing interpretive essays that introduce readers to him. Her work is part of an on-going effort to prepare a digital documentary edition of these wonderful journals. She will also pursue a project of her own design based on the diaries that will enrich our understanding of the law, Virginia, and the United States during a period of chaotic transformation. 

Melissa Gismondi comes onboard as co-director of our Digital 1828 Catalogue Collection Project, an initiative supported by the Jefferson Trust Foundation. Melissa specializes in the history of nineteenth-century North America. She recently defended her dissertation and will receive her Ph.D. in August 2017. Her work focuses on the military and political partnership of President Andrew Jackson and his wife, Rachel, which she is developing into a book. She is also the moderator of BookStory, a new book club from BackStory, a program of the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities. 

As we noted in our Jefferson Trust grant application:

“In 1820, Thomas Jefferson believed the new University of Virginia would empower the ‘illimitable freedom of the human mind, to explore and to expose every subject susceptible of it’s contemplation.’ Jefferson envisioned the library as the centerpiece of university life and the foundation of his grand vision for American education. In 1824, he selected 7,000 volumes, including over 700 law books, to fill the library’s shelves. Jefferson believed that enabling access to these texts at UVA would overcome economic disparities and create educational opportunities for a broad audience. ‘Great standard works of established reputation, too voluminous and too expensive for private libraries,’ he wrote to the university’s purchasing agent, ‘should have a place in every public library, for the free resort of individuals.’ In Jefferson’s mind, an easily accessible library should be one of the cornerstones of a democratic society by allowing citizens and scholars convenient access to knowledge and the tools to create new knowledge.

The Digital 1828 Catalogue Collection Project reconstructs the original corpus of 721 legal texts purchased for the first UVA library and listed in UVA’s 1828 Catalogue. The UVA Law Library has been working for forty years to collect these rare legal titles, most of which were originally selected by Thomas Jefferson. This student-centered project will build a digital version of this collection using a new tool called the Virtual Bookshelf. The Virtual Bookshelf will enable new historical scholarship on foundational texts in early American and transatlantic legal history, and provide UVA libraries with a powerful new way to manage their digital presence. Built on a rich database of bibliographic information, this immersive website preserves the traditional browsing experience while providing students with experiential learning and leadership opportunities to explore the law library’s international origins and contribute to the university’s digital evolution.”

Over the next few months Melissa will create interpretive content for the new 1828 site, explore interesting facets about particular texts, and help us lay the groundwork for new scholarship centered on these fascinating volumes. Along the way she’ll develop her own professional interest in digital history and engage the public through social media. 

Both Abby and Melissa will contribute regularly to this blog over this summer. Be sure to follow us on social media for updates about these exciting initiatives. 

The rancorous 2016 presidential election concluded on November 8^th with Republican Donald J. Trump’s dramatic upset victory over Democrat Hillary Clinton. Voters went to the polls to choose the nation’s next leader, and by doing so entrusted the next president with the power to shape the composition of the Supreme Court for a generation. President-elect Trump will now have the opportunity to nominate a replacement for Justice Antonin Scalia, whose death earlier this year created a vacancy that remains unfilled despite President Obama’s nomination of Judge Merrick Garland. On the campaign trail and the debate stage both Clinton and Trump spoke to the kind of justices they would appoint to the court. It served as a reminder of the Supreme Court’s political nature and the central role that the justices who compose it play in forming a more perfect Union. 

The passing of a former Supreme Court law clerk four days before the election affords us a chance to pull back the granite curtain on the court’s inner workings during an earlier period of intense division within American society. E. Barrett Prettyman, Jr., who died on November 4, 2016 after a long career of public service and a successful private practice, clerked for the Court in the mid-1950s when it handed down its momentous decision in Brown v. Board of Education. The unanimous decision in that case overturned the “separate but equal” racial segregation precedent established in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) by declaring that segregation in public schools violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14^th Amendment. The landmark case was a crucial moment in the early Civil Rights Movement, a period in which Americans of every creed and color contested the fundamental meanings of liberty, equality, and citizenship in the republic.

In 1986, Prettyman donated a large portion of his legal papers to the Arthur J. Morris Law Library. They offer valuable insights into the Court’s internal deliberations over Brown v. Board of Education and other prominent cases in the period.[1] Equally important, they put a human face on some of the Court’s black-robed personalities and illuminate the special bond that clerks formed with their justices as they together interpreted and refined American law.

Prettyman, Jr. was a 1949 Yale University graduate and the son of Judge E. Barrett Prettyman of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. The younger Prettyman completed his law degree in 1953 at the University of Virginia School of Law. During his time at UVA he was a member of the Student Legal Forum, an organization newly created to bring prominent legal minds to Grounds. In 1951, Prettyman, no doubt benefiting from his father’s position on the appellate court, arranged for Associate Justice Robert H. Jackson to speak on Grounds.[2] Two years later Justice Jackson hired Prettyman to serve as one of his law clerks at a salary of $5,175.50. His performance warranted a nearly $1,000 raise the following year, but he joined Justice John M. Harlan in November 1954 after Justice Jackson suffered a fatal heart attack.[3] Prettyman served Justice Felix Frankfurter during this period as well.

Becoming Justice Jackson’s law clerk in 1953 thrust Prettymen into the Court’s deliberations over Brown v. Board of Education. The justices first heard arguments in the consolidated case the previous December and ordered re-arguments for the fall of 1953. Some of the justices, particularly Frankfurter, hoped that in the interim Congress would outlaw public school segregation and thus avoid the need for judicial intervention. Justice Stanley F. Reed preferred that the states end segregation on their own terms. Despite their collective misgivings many of the justices were at least open to the idea of striking down the Plessy doctrine. Others required more convincing. The proponents for overturning the “separate but equal” precedent feared that an opinion issued by a divided court risked undermining the legitimacy of the ruling. Dissenting opinions could lend a measure of credence to the belief that segregation was constitutionally sound and bolster advocates for segregation in state and local communities.   

While Frankfurter did not get his wish for congressional intervention, the death of Chief Justice Fred M. Vinson in September 1953 changed the Court’s dynamics in unexpected ways. The Kentuckian’s fellow justices believed that he would vote to uphold Plessy on the basis of well-established judicial precedent. Vinson’s demise was for Frankfurter “the first indication I have ever had that there is a God.”[4] It brought a new chief justice to the Court in the form of California Governor Earl Warren and the potential for a unanimous decision in Brown’s favor.

After the Court reheard arguments in December 1953 the new chief famously worked to persuade his colleagues, including Justice Reed, that overturning Plessy was both a legal and moral imperative.[5] The Court would issue a unanimous decision to strike down the separate but equal doctrine. The question then became whether the justices would release a single opinion or deliver multiple concurring statements.

For a number of months Justice Jackson considered authoring a separate opinion. He believed that Plessy should be undone, although he struggled to find a satisfactory legal theory to support his position. His draft opinion well reflected this difficulty in its conclusion that the “mere possession of colored blood, in whole or in part, no longer affords a reasonable basis for a classification for educational purposes and that each individual must be rated on his own merit.”[6] In other words, instead of identifying a precise point of law with which segregation conflicted, Justice Jackson’s opinion rested on the assumption that segregation was no longer legally defensible. Even then the main thesis occupied very little space in his draft document. The opinion itself meandered through an exploration of southern culture and African–American advancement in post-Civil War America to the legislative history of the 5^th and 14^th Amendments and their respective Due Process Clauses, the problem of enforcing the Court’s order, and the acceptance of segregation’s constitutionality in American history. Only then did Justice Jackson weakly assert that segregation no longer had a legal basis.

The Justice gave his draft opinion to Prettyman for his evaluation. The young lawyer immediately recognized its unfocused nature. Indeed, as Prettyman pointed out to Justice Jackson in a lengthy critique, the legal reasoning to strike down Plessy was stated “in only two out of 23 pages” and was “almost an afterthought.” Prettyman was blunt with his mentor: The document had an “apologetic” tone as if “you were ashamed to reach” its conclusion. Delivering a sheepish concurring opinion, he argued, would undermine the Court’s authority because “Some one must make these decisions, and under our system the burden is on the courts.” An opinion should be confidently argued and forcefully given to retain the public’s confidence in the Court’s decision. Whatever conclusions the majority or individual justices reached, the public needed to feel that “it is a decision based upon law” and not the wishes of “a bunch of liberals in Washington” foisting their views on the masses.[7]

Prettyman believed that Justice Jackson’s draft opinion appeared weak and apologetic in part because the Justice could not say with precision how he knew that sufficient racial equality had been achieved or when it had happened. Both Justice Jackson’s draft opinion and Prettyman’s memorandum traded in contemporary ideas of racial inferiority and uplift that informed sociological and intellectual attitudes about African Americans in the mid-twentieth century.[8] Prettyman suggested that the Justice restructure his opinion by moving his conclusion to the beginning and justifying it through an exploration of the expansion of public education in the United States. He pointed to the Justice’s underlying theme that “public education is no longer for the privileged few” and that as America had “adopted [Thomas] Jefferson’s great dream” of a broadly educated public, “mass education, for all people, is simply an established fact in this country today.” Repackaging his discussion about black social and intellectual advancement since Emancipation would then allow the Justice to counter pro-segregation arguments based on assertions of racial inequality and in turn argue that “the races are no longer sufficiently unequal or distinct to warrant” separate but equal policies.[9]

Justice Jackson ultimately decided not to issue a concurring opinion. A combination of his initial heart attack in March 1954, his own inability to develop a sound legal theory, and Chief Justice Warren’s desire for a unified statement prevented him from finishing the work.[10] In a memo from December 1954, Prettyman recorded that Justice Jackson was about to begin refining his opinion based on his clerk’s critique when he became ill. Nevertheless, one morning, following a visit from Chief Justice Warren to his hospital room, Justice Jackson asked Prettyman to write a concise paragraph based on his evaluation. The Chief Justice was due back in the afternoon and Justice Jackson believed that Warren’s own draft opinion “could use a little more law.” While the paragraph is not among Prettyman’s papers in the UVA Law Library, Prettyman’s memo suggests that he delivered to Justice Jackson language that declared an end to legal segregation in general, and not just in public education. The two justices discussed Prettyman’s paragraph (with Jackson giving the Chief Justice an oral summary of it) before deciding that the Court’s final opinion should remain focused just on segregation in public education.[11] The Court, with Justice Jackson in attendance despite his recent heart attack, announced its decision on May 17, 1954.

Prettyman’s critical reading of Justice Jackson’s draft opinion demonstrates the trust that Supreme Court justices place in their law clerks to assist them in their duties. Justice Jackson and his colleagues well understood that Brown v. Board of Education was one of the most important cases ever to come before the Court. Their historical awareness of the moment added to the challenge they faced in crafting an opinion that overturned established doctrines rooted in social norms and law dating back well before Plessy v. Ferguson. Justice Jackson’s collaboration with Prettyman to meet that task helped him to see where he had fallen short in articulating the unconstitutionality of segregation even though he felt the practice should end. Prettyman and his fellow law clerks played crucial roles in this and other cases to help the Court “say what the law is.”[12]

The bond between Prettyman and the justices he served extended far beyond their intellectual discussions about the law. Humorous exchanges at surprising moments hinted at the respect and even the friendship that they felt for one another. An exchange between Prettyman and Justices Frankfurter and Hugo Black illustrates this point. On April 20, 1955, the Court reheard oral arguments in the case of Ellis v. Dixon. The case pitted James R. Ellis, the president of the Yonkers Committee for Peace, against William Dixon and the members of the Board of Education of the City of Yonkers. The Committee wanted to use Yonkers public school buildings to hold a forum on peace and war, but the school board denied its request. The Committee claimed that the Yonkers school board had violated the First and Fourteenth Amendment rights of its members.

Unfortunately for the Committee, its lawyers could not really say just how the Yonkers school board had violated their constitutional rights. They conceded that the school board had the power to deny use of its facilities to non-scholastic groups and claimed that the school board applied state and local regulations selectively, although they could not offer the Court a specific example.

Justice Frankfurter thought that the case was a big waste of time. He silently questioned why the Court had even agreed to take the case in the first place as he listened to the plaintiffs. Frankfurter, a man with a forceful, if not intimidating, personality, sent a note to Prettyman who was sitting in the audience. “Believe it or not,” he wrote, “but I am resolved not to say a word in his case! FF.”[13] Prettyman played along. He returned the note with the reply, “I’ll give you 25¢, 6 jelly beans and a pat on the back if you keep your promise.” The “jelly beans” comment referred to a recent news story about Albert Einstein and his acceptance of candy or baked goods in exchange for helping young people with their math homework.[14] Frankfurter didn’t miss a beat: “You must have read the Einstein story about ‘jelly beans.”

As the Yonkers Committee’s lawyer continued Justice Frankfurter grew more and more impatient. “Of all the baseless certs,” he again wrote to Prettyman, “this is it!!” Still, he did not ask any questions. Frankfurter explained his uncharacteristically quiet demeanor in a fourth note: “My silence is meant to be disdain and contempt. FF.” It did not last much longer. Chief Justice Warren asked the Committee’s lawyer a question at the conclusion of his oral argument that then turned into a discussion about filing further briefs. Frankfurter, perhaps fearing that even more of the Court’s time would be squandered, “almost exploded with a combination question and comment.”[15] When Frankfurter had finished, Justice Black, aware of the bet, sent a note of his own to Prettyman. “Don’t let him off on a technicality,” he wrote, “that was a question.” Sensing that he may have lost the wager, Frankfurter quickly sent another note ruling that “my intervention was after the argument, on a point unrelated to the argument — and so, please 25¢, 6 jelly beans.”

Prettyman retreated to his office to type out a formal “opinion” that held Justice Frankfurter in violation of the agreement. He sent it to Frankfurter who was, as a reminder, still sitting on the bench hearing the case. The justice soon sent it back with his replies. Prettyman reiterated that Frankfurter had promised to remain silent during the lawyer’s oral argument and that the lawyer had not yet rested his case when Frankfurter spoke. “The ‘case’ is over,” Frankfurter replied, “in the sense in which the word ‘case’ was used in context.” That was to say, it wasn’t much of a case at all. To Prettyman’s observation that Justice Black had overruled him, Frankfurter responded that he “did not know [Black] had that power without four more.” Finally, Prettyman lamented that while Frankfurter laid claim to the money and jelly beans, he had said nothing about the pat on the back. “That’s a sad commentary on our friendship,” Prettyman ribbed. Frankfurter underlined “pat on the back” and exclaimed that “I’d rather have that than even 60 jelly beans!” His view of the case was vindicated when the Court ruled 5-4 that the writ of certiorari had been improvidently granted.[16]

What the E. Barrett Prettyman, Jr. Papers at UVA’s Morris Law Library offer us is a rare view into the Supreme Court’s inner sanctum and the people who inhabited it at a critical turning point in American history. The Court’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education lent momentum to a growing Civil Rights Movement that transformed American society in profound ways. Prettyman’s files allow us to glimpse into the Court’s internal struggle to reach a decision and into Justice Jackson’s ultimately futile search for a legal theory to support his concurrence. They also reveal a more human side of the Court, one that shows the justices as capable of humor and warmth even as they sat on the bench hearing a case.  

In January 2017, President-elect Trump will begin the process of reshaping the Supreme Court by appointing a new woman or man to fill Justice Scalia’s seat. If the recent election is any indication, the person whom Mr. Trump nominates will probably provoke passions on both sides of the political spectrum on his or her way through a contentious confirmation process. The Prettyman Papers can help scholars and the interested public look past the ideological walls often thrown up during a change in the Court’s structure to see the justices and those with whom they worked on their own terms as they grappled with important matters of law and society. Researchers wishing to consult this important collection may do so online or in person by contacting the Arthur J. Morris Law Library at lawarchives@virginia.edu.

Featured image: Justice Harlan at a 1965 reunion with his law clerks. Prettyman stands behind and to the right of Justice Harlan, center. From The Papers of E. Barrett Prettyman, Jr. 1944 – 1982.

[1] Prettyman, Jr. donated another collection of his papers to the Special Collections Library at the University of Maryland. See E. Barrett Prettyman papers, Special Collections, University of Maryland Libraries, http://hdl.handle.net/1903.1/1530; For more on the relationship between Prettyman, Jr. and Justice Jackson, see the Robert H. Jackson Papers, 1892-1954 in the Library of Congress, http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.mss/eadmss.ms003002.

[2] Robert H. Jackson to E. Barrett Prettyman, Jr., 8 October 1951; Jackson to Prettyman, Jr., 6 November 1951, Papers of E. Barrett Prettyman, Jr. MSS 86-5, Box 1, Special Collections, University of Virginia Law Library.

[3] Justice Jackson’s secretary to J. C. Reynolds, 18 May 1953; Contract to Clerk for Robert H. Jackson, 1 June 1954; Prettyman, Jr. to John M. Harlan, 12 November 1954, all in Ibid.

[4] Frankfurter quoted in Michael J. Klarman, Brown v. Board of Education and the Civil Rights Movement (New York and London: Oxford University Press, 2007), 67.

[5] My account of these deliberations follows James T. Patterson, Brown v. Board of Education: A Civil Rights Milestone and Its Troubled Legacy (New York and London: Oxford University Press, 2001), 52-65; Klarman, Brown v. Board, 55-78.  See Risa L. Goluboff, The Lost Promise of Civil Rights (Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, 2007), for an important look at the history of American civil rights law before Brown v.  Board of Education.

[6] “Memorandum by Mr. Justice Jackson” in Mark Tushnet, ed., I Dissent: Great Opposing Opinions in Landmark Supreme Court Cases (Boston: Beacon Press, 2008), 144. As Tushnet notes, Justice Jackson’s opinion was not a dissent, but he chose to include it in his edited collection for the provocative ways that pro-segregationists might have turned it into a de facto dissent.

[7] Prettyman, Re Nos. 1-4, c. March-May 1954, Prettyman Papers, MSS 86-5, Box 2.

[8] For a good general discussion of uplift ideology see Kevin K. Gaines, “Racial Uplift Ideology in the Era of ‘the Negro Problem.’” Freedom’s Story, TeacherServe©. National Humanities Center. Accessed 10 November 2016,
http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/tserve/freedom/1865-1917/essays/racialuplift.htm.

[9] Prettyman, Re Nos. 1-4, c. March-May 1954, MSS 86-5, Box 2.

[10] The original copy of Justice Jackson’s memo is in the Library of Congress. See “Memorandum by Mr. Justice Jackson.” Brown file, Robert H Jackson Papers. Library of Congress. The document came to light after William H. Rehnquist’s 1986 Senate confirmation hearings to become chief justice. In 1952, Rehnquist had written a memo for Justice Jackson entitled “A Random Thought on the Segregation Cases” in which he argued that “Plessy v. Ferguson was right and should be re-affirmed.” The memo became a source of contention during the confirmation hearings as Rehnquist claimed that it reflected Justice Jackson’s views and not his own. Justice Jackson’s draft concurring opinion in Brown v. Board of Education suggests otherwise. See Bernard Schwartz, A History of the Supreme Court (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), 289-291.

[11] Prettyman, “Notes re Segregation Decision, 15 December 1954, Prettyman Papers, MSS 86-5, Box 2.

[12] Marbury v. Madison (1803).

[13] The notes exchanged between Prettyman, Frankfurter, and Black are all dated 20 April 1955 and are in Prettyman Papers, MSS 86-5, Box 4.

[14] I have not found the specific article that Prettyman alludes to, but Walter Isaacson discuses Einstein’s candy-for-homework-help bargains in his Einstein: His Life and Universe (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2007), 439-440. Kent Olson, Head of Research Services at the UVA Law Library, worked his magic to turn up an article in The Washington Post from 1940 that mentions Einstein’s quid pro quo. See Leonard Lyons, “The New Yorker,” The Washington Post, 24 October 1940. 

[15] Prettyman to Marsha Trimble Rogers, 16 March 1989, Prettyman Papers, MSS 86-5, Box 4.

[16] Ellis v. Dixon (1955). For Prettyman, Jr.’s analysis of the case and his recommendation that the writ of certiorari be dismissed as improvidently granted see “Memorandum by Pretty Regarding Ellis v. Dixon, circa 1955,” Prettyman Papers, MSS 86-5, Box 2.