The Great Paper Caper. Someone swiped Justice Frankfurter’s papers. What else has gone missing?

Jill Lepore, The Great Paper Caper. Someone swiped Justice Frankfurter’s papers. What else has gone missing? The New Yorker, 1 December 2014. “The papers of Supreme Court Justices are not public records; they’re private property. The decision whether to make these documents available is entirely at the discretion of the Justices and their heirs and executors. They can shred them; they can burn them; they can use them as placemats. Texts vanish; e-mails are deleted. The Court has no policies or guidelines for secretaries and clerks about what to keep and what to throw away. Some Justices have destroyed virtually their entire documentary trail; others have made a point of tossing their conference notes. “Operation Frustrate the Historians,” Hugo Black’s children called it, as the sky filled with ashes the day they made their bonfire.”

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