Collection is open for research.
Gifts of Edwin J. Peterson from February to November 2018 (Lib. Acc. 29197; Lib. Acc. 29224; Lib. Acc. 29256; Lib. Acc. 29407).
Edwin Junior Peterson was born in 1930 in Gilmanton, Wisconsin. His family moved to Eugene, Oregon, in 1944 due to his severe asthma. He studied music at the University of Oregon, graduating in 1951. He served in the U.S. Air Force during the Korean War. After his discharge in 1954, he studied law at the University of Oregon, earning his degree in 1957. He met Barbara Lee while in law school, and they married in 1957; Peterson later adopted her two children, and the couple had another two children. He then joined the Portland, Oregon, law firm Tooze, Kerr, Peterson, Marshall & Shenker. Peterson divorced in the late 1960s, and in 1971, he remarried to Anna M. Perrault, nee Chadwick, who had joined the law firm as a receptionist in 1968. In 1979, Governor Vic Atiyeh appointed Peterson to the Oregon Supreme Court. In 1981, he was elected chief justice, a position he held until 1991. During his time on the Oregon Supreme Court, he focused on improving the efficiency of courts and combating racial and ethnic biases in the courts. For his work, he was awarded the American Judicature Society's Herbert Harley Award in 1992. Peterson resigned from the court at the end of 1993. He later became a Distinguished Jurist in Residence at Willamette University. Peterson died in 2023.
Source: Oral history interview with Edwin J. Peterson, SR 11201, Oregon Historical Society Research Library; articles in the Oregonian, 1979-1994.
Edwin J. Peterson papers, Coll 766, Oregon Historical Society Research Library.
Partially processed by Jeffrey A. Hayes in November 2018. Additional processing done by Jeffrey A. Hayes in September 2022; this included removing scrapbook and photograph album pages from binders for preservation purposes. Collection was titled "Justice Edwin Peterson papers" prior to 2022.
An oral history interview with Peterson, SR 11201, is also held at the Oregon Historical Society Research Library, and is available online in OHS Digital Collections at
The collection consists of the papers of Oregon Supreme Court Chief Justice Edwin J. Peterson. A substantial amount of the collection consists of notebooks that Peterson kept during and after his tenure as a justice, which detail his day-to-day activities. There are also an additional 11 notebooks that Peterson dedicated specifically to writing notes about hearings he presided over.
Other materials in the collection include appointment calendars, Oregon State Bar directories, bound volumes of Peterson's judicial opinions, photograph albums, and scrapbooks. The photograph albums contain photographs of Peterson and other justices at work, at conferences, and at professional and social gatherings; the scrapbooks contain correspondence, clippings, photographs, and ephemera relating to Peterson's career. While Peterson compiled most of these scrapbooks himself, the collection includes one scrapbook that the Multnomah Bar Association presented to Peterson at a 1994 event in his honor.
T-shirt with images of Oregon Supreme Court justices was separated to museum collections, Oregon Historical Society.
The Oregon Historical Society owns the materials in the Research Library and makes available reproductions for research, publication, and other uses. The Society does not necessarily hold copyright to all materials in the collections. In some cases, permission for use may require seeking additional authorization from copyright owners.