Collections

The Leigh Bienen Papers include the records of the New Jersey Proportionality Review Project, the Illinois Capital Punishment Reform Study Commission, and the academic research papers of legal scholar Leigh Bienen. The New Jersey records contain material from New Jersey Public Defender Homicide Study directed by Bienen in the mid-1980s. The collection also includes the records from Bienen's involvement with the New Jersey Proportionality Review Project headed by Special Master David C. Baldus. Also present is material from Leigh Bienen's tenure on the Illinois Capital Punishment Reform Study Commission which resulted in the abolition of the death penalty in that state in 2011. Finally the collection contains Leigh Bienen's scholarly research material during her career teaching at both Princeton University and Northwestern University. Her research focused on proportionality review, the death penalty's monetary costs, and the role of prosecutor discretion.

Correspondence with publishers and environmental groups including the Constitutional Council for Forest Preserves, 1970–71; Defenders of Wildlife, 1970–76; Albany Environmental Council, 1965–76; draft manuscripts and typescripts, 1956–79, of texts, scholarly and popular articles and books relating to local, state, national, and international government and to environmental issues such as the anti-nuclear movement, forest preservation, wildlife preservation, the Adirondack Mountains, lecture notes taken as a student and given to his classes, 1930–70, scripts for his television series "Man Against His Environment", 1970–71, drafts of speeches on environmental concerns, tape cassettes on environmental issues created as staff lecturer for the Center for Cassette Studies, clippings files on government and environmental issues, photographs of Rienow and his wife. Robert Rienow was educated at Carthage College (B.A., 1930), and Columbia University (M.A., 1934; Ph.D., 1937), served as Instructor, 1936–41, Assistant Professor, 1941–47, and Professor, 1947–80, of Social Science at the State University of New York at Albany, now the University at Albany. Through out his career Rienow maintained an active interest in environmental issues and a belief in the need to popularize issues of public concern. (See also papers of his wife Leona Train Rienow).