This collection is based on a bound album of manuscripts collected by Louis H. Silver (JD ’28), a noted rare book and manuscript collector. It was donated to the Law School Library in the late 1950’s. The album contains at least one letter or signed document from every Supreme Court Justice from John Jay to Edward Douglass White, plus signed documents from most of the Justices from White to William Howard Taft. These are accompanied by sixty signed miniature portraits of the Justices by Philadelphia artists Max and Albert Rosenthal, and a few photographs of later Justices.
An article in The University of Chicago Law School Record describes a few of the highlights of the collection, with comments by Professors Alison LaCroix and William Baude: Becky Beaupre Gillespie, "Hidden Treasures: An Unexpected discovery in the D’Angelo Law Library unearthed an original letter from John Marshall to George Washington. And that wasn’t all," The University of Chicago Law School Record 63, no. 2 (Spring 2017): 20.