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Rob Berry

Decades later, current headlines echo controversies addressed in Morris Ernst collection

April 12, 2012 - Nicole Davis

Morris L. Ernst (left, holding book) was one of the most active attorneys for the anti-censorship cause during the interwar years. In this 1935 photograph, from the "New York Journal American" collection, Ernst defends the Gustavo Flaubert's "November."

Through a generous grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, a team of archivists and student interns has been working to organize and catalog the papers of attorney Morris Leopold Ernst since September 2009. The collection is now open for research, and a finding aid is available online.

Morris Leopold Ernst (1888–1976), who earned his law degree 100 years ago, may not yet be a household name, but his legal career has had a lasting impact on American society. Ernst dealt primarily with civil liberties cases in a variety of areas, including censorship, obscenity, and first amendment rights. In addition to his busy legal career, he was a prolific writer, authoring more than 30 books and hundreds of articles, essays, and short works on legal topics and other social issues like big business and divorce.

Ernst is probably best known for his work in literary censorship cases. His influential fights include the defense of Radclyffe Hall’s The Well of Loneliness, Arthur Schnitzler’s Casanova’s Homecoming, and most famously, James Joyce’s Ulysses.

[Read more…] about Decades later, current headlines echo controversies addressed in Morris Ernst collection

Filed Under: Cataloging, Research + Teaching Tagged With: archives, Arthur Schnitzler, birth control, Casanova’s Homecoming, censorship, et al. v. Committee for Industrial Organization et al., Frank Hague, Hague, James Joyce, Josh Levitas, labor unions, Mayor, Morris Ernst, Radclyffe Hall, Rob Berry, The Well of Loneliness, too big to fail, Ulysses, United States v. One Book Entitled Ulysses by James Joyce, United States v. One Package of Japanese Pessaries

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