Prison Issues

Judiciary files for Senator Mitchell's office were created and maintained from 1980 through 1994 by Anita Jensen, a legislative aide specializing in legal and judicial issues. These files consist of reports, correspondence, briefs, press clippings, and GPO publications including testimony transcripts. They were used to write memos, reports, and speeches, and to map out strategies and legislation concerning judiciary issues. Material covers judiciary events and bills under consideration in the Senate Judiciary Committee and in Congress. Major subject areas represented are abortion, anti-trust, civil rights, government ethics, criminal law, gun control, immigration, and actions of the Justice Department. The series also contains information on communications issues, which were not necessarily related to the Judiciary Committee. Files contain information on the nominations of cabinet and judicial candidates such as Lani Guinier, Zoe Baird, Janet Reno, Clarence Thomas, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Stephen G. Breyer. The file series was created and maintained by Anita Jensen, Senator Mitchell's advisor on legal and judiciary affairs and his principal speech writer. It consists of three groups: the first four boxes contain early judicial files generally ranging from 1980 to 1984, which are arranged according to an early filing code system; the majority of the remaining boxes contains files created between 1985 and 1991, and is arranged alphabetically by major heading and then subheading (i.e. CRIMINAL LAW: Capital punishment); the last three boxes in the series contain GPO publications concerning impeachment hearings.