Papers of William J. Butler

A Quick Guide:

• Biographical Sketch of William J. Butler
  
• A Guide to His Papers
  
• Access and Use
  

The Robert S. Marx Law Library is privileged to have been selected as the repository for the Papers of William J. Butler. During the second half of the twentieth century Mr. Butler was widely recognized as an individual who worked diligently and consistently to further the cause of human rights both at home and around the globe.

The Papers of William J. Butler include speeches, letters, congressional testimony and other personal and professional writings that document the human rights contributions and other public service of William J. Butler. Also included in this collection are: proceedings of annual meetings of representatives of sovereign nations on human rights and foreign policy held from 1977 to 1999; executive documents of the International Commission of Jurists and the American Association of the International Commission of Jurists; reports of human rights missions to numerous countries; materials generated during international human rights trials observed by William Butler; and, two landmark civil rights cases he argued and won in the U.S. Supreme Court, namely, Engel v. Vitale (1962), "the school prayer case" and Kent v. Dulles (1958), "the passport case."

At the request of Mr. Butler, a special section of his Papers is being developed. The section, "Liberty Versus Security" will be the depository of court filings in the Rasul, Hamdi and Padilla cases as well as other materials relating to the Rule of Law in the Age of "Terrorism." Mr. Butler's April 29, 2004 lecture on The Guantánamo Bay Detainees Case kicked off this project at the University of Cincinnati College of Law. The staff of the College's law library, under the guidance of Mr. Butler, is developing "The Enemy Combatants Litigation Records" archives.

Finding Aid for the Papers of William J. Butler

The collection is fully described by an online finding aid prepared by the staff of the Robert S. Marx Law Library. This finding aid includes an index to the material in the collection as well as a detailed inventory. It also includes a list of selected publications by Mr. Butler and links to related items in online library catalogs.

Biographical Sketch:

With his contributions spanning over half a century, William J. Butler's name has become synonymous with Human Rights. After his ship was sunk in the Normandy invasion, William Butler met Jane Hays, a volunteer at the center where he was recuperating, and they married shortly thereafter. Ms. Hays' father, the noted civil rights attorney, Arthur Garfield Hays, was to have an enormous, life-long influence on the young William Butler.

William Butler completed his studies at Harvard University in 1946, and three years later received his law degree from New York University. Immediately after law school, he served as Staff Counsel to the American Civil Liberties Union, where he worked closely with Roger Baldwin, the organization's founder. Over the course of a distinguished legal career, Mr. Butler twice argued and won landmark civil rights cases before the United States Supreme Court (Engel v. Vitale (1962), "the school prayer case," and Kent v. Dulles (1958), "the passport case"), and represented Sarah Lawrence University before the United States Senate's Jenner Committee formed to conduct an inquiry into governmental loyalty.

Since 1977, Mr. Butler convened annual meetings of the principal human rights officials of Western governments to discuss issues of common concern. As a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, he is best known for his long association with the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ), where he has served as Chairman of the Executive Committee, and as President of the American Association of the International Commission of Jurists. On behalf of the ICJ, he led human rights missions to Iran, the Philippines, Guatemala, Palau, South Africa, and Uruguay, and he represented the ICJ at the United Nations Social Summit in Copenhagen and the Rome Conference establishing a permanent International Criminal Court. Recently, Mr. Butler served as an ICJ Observer at the Pinochet hearings before the House of Lords and represented the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights at the trial of Kurdish leader Ocalan in Turkey. In 2000, Mr. Butler was named as the High Commissioner's Special Regional Advisor on Human Rights for North America. In 2001, he convened a worldwide meeting of experts which resulted in the issuance of The Princeton Principles on Universal Jurisdiction.

William Butler has served on many other distinguished boards and committees, among them the Urban Affairs Commission of the American Jewish Congress, the New York civil Liberties Union, the International League for Human Rights, the League to Abolish Capital Punishment, and the human rights committee of the World Peace through Law Center in Geneva. He is the founder of the Center for the Independence of Lawyers and Judges. Mr. Butler's impact on the academic world includes co-founding the Arthur Garfield Hays Civil Liberties Program at New York University Law School, and founding the Urban Morgan Institute for Human Rights at the University of Cincinnati College of Law.

Throughout his career, William J. Butler has epitomized the traits of the quintessential human rights lawyer-courage, creativity, and tenacity. It was in recognition of these traits that the Urban Morgan Institute established the William J. Butler Human Rights Medal, the first of which was awarded to Mary Bourke Robinson, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, on March 9, 2000. On November 10, 2001, the second Butler medal was awarded to four of the major contributors to the creation of the International Criminal Court which came into force on the sixtieth state ratification, in April 2002: Hans Corell, Under-Secretary-General for Legal Affairs and Legal Counsel of the United Nations; M. Cherif Bassiouni, chairman of the drafting committee, Philippe Kirsch, chairman of the committee of the whole; and William Pace, convenor of the Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) Coalition for the International Criminal Court.

Access to and Use of the Collection:

To make arrangements to work with the collection, contact:

Ken Hirsh
Director, Law Library & Information Technology
Professor of Clinical Law
Robert S. Marx Law Library
University of Cincinnati College of Law
PO Box 210142
Cincinnati, OH  45221-0142
Telephone: (513) 556-0159
Email: ken.hirsh@uc.edu